Handbook of moral motivation: Theories, models ... - Sense Publishers

T. E. WRENHumpty-Dumptean conclusion 3 that there is really nothing in common among thingsbearing the same name other than that they are called by the same name.The Functions of ConscienceI turn now to the question of whether an intermediate position can be found betweenthese two extremes of reifying conscience as a wee small voice and dismissing itas nothing more than an incidentally useful but basically arbitrary labeling device.The history of moral philosophy suggests that some such middle ground can befound. True, there are enormous substantive differences in the ways philosophershave conceptualized conscience, one of the most crucial being the shift from theAristotelian notion of an intellectual virtue (phronesis) to the 20 th century emotivistview that reduced conscience to internal exclamations of “Boo!” or “Hurrah!” Byand large, though, the philosophical history of “conscience” has revolved around therole conscience is thought to play, from which has arisen a conception of consciencethat is not so much substantive as function oriented. 4 Ever since Plato, it has beenthought of as an internalized conduct control that commends, blames, and otherwiseregulates one’s overt and covert behaviour by means of self-monitoring evaluativecognition . This idea is eminently compatible with western theologies, as Augustine’sConfessions and Joseph Butler’s Sermons demonstrate. However, it is also quitecompatible with naturalistic theories of human behaviour, as Justin Aronfreedtried to show in the opening pages of his watershed theoretical study Conductand Conscience (1968; see also Aronfreed, 1971). This function-oriented notionretains the valid insight of the old moral sense theorists and other philosophers whohave reified conscience, namely that there really is something special about moralcognition , and that it is more than just a general feeling tone, a specific kind ofbehavioral output, or any other empirical feature of conscience .In the following pages I will try to show how that insight is present in varioustypes of moral psychology. In order to do so I will consider the function ofconscience as itself having two aspects or sub-functions. The first can be thoughtof as the tendency or (better) a set of tendencies to act in conformity with one’smoral judgment s. These compliance tendencies include other-oriented motive ssuch as love or gratitude and self-oriented ones such as the need for acceptanceand approval. In what follows, I will refer to them as moral motives. The secondrole of conscience can be thought of as an underlying sense of conscientiousness ormoral care, which in the following pages I will call moral motivation . Although itsrole is really distinct from the first role of conscience, what I have in mind here is ageneral disposition or metamotivation, cutting across the historical and conceptualmanifold of moral situations and their diverse sorts of actions and moral principles ,in such a way that the deliverances of moral judgment are understood by the agentas providing exciting as well as discriminating reasons for action .The interrelation between these two aspects or roles of conscience is complex, butit can be articulated as a matrix formed by combining the two pairs of contrasting30