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    The obligatoriness of one's conscience for oneself is not... — Carmelics
    Home/Moral Responsibility
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    The obligatoriness of one's conscience for oneself is not negated by the fact that following a corruptly formed conscience also constitutes acting wrongly.

    Moral ResponsibilityVirtue Ethics
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.If one has formed one's judgment of conscience corruptly, one acts wrongly in following it.
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    • 2.The obligatoriness of conscience derives from its status as one's own firm practical judgment, not from its correctness.
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    • 3.Both following and violating a corruptly formed conscience can be wrong, but this dual wrongness does not dissolve the binding force of conscience on the agent.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.A judgment that is corruptly formed lacks the rational authority necessary to generate genuine moral obligation, as obligation requires more than mere psychological compulsion.
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    • 2.Aquinas himself held that conscience binds because it participates in right reason and eternal law; a corrupted conscience severs this participation and thus its normative ground.
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    • 3.If both following and violating a corrupt conscience are wrong, the agent faces a genuine moral dilemma with no obligating force in either direction, not a doubled obligation.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Butler and the Scottish common sense tradition distinguish between the authority of conscience as a faculty and the authority of any particular conscientious verdict, grounding obligation in the former alone.
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    • 2.A corruptly formed verdict issues from a faculty operating below its proper standard, and such sub-standard outputs inherit the faculty's authority only when the corruption is non-culpable.
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    • 3.Where the agent is culpable for the corruption, as Aquinas acknowledges in cases of vincible ignorance, the verdict generates responsibility for the corruption rather than a fresh obligation to comply.
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    Topics

    Moral ResponsibilityVirtue Ethics

    Connections

    1 topic

    Justice & Punishment1 linked

    Related

    A corruptly formed verdict issues from a faculty operating below its proper stan...A judgment that is corruptly formed lacks the rational authority necessary to ge...Aquinas himself held that conscience binds because it participates in right reas...Both following and violating a corruptly formed conscience can be wrong, but thi...
    +5 moreShow less
    Butler and the Scottish common sense tradition distinguish between the authority...If both following and violating a corrupt conscience are wrong, the agent faces ...If one has formed one's judgment of conscience corruptly, one acts wrongly in fo...The obligatoriness of conscience derives from its status as one's own firm pract...Where the agent is culpable for the corruption, as Aquinas acknowledges in cases...

    Similar

    The obligatoriness of conscience derives from its status as one's own ...87%Both following and violating a corruptly formed conscience can be wron...86%If one has formed one's judgment of conscience corruptly, one acts wro...86%One's conscience is binding upon oneself even when one's conscience is...85%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: aquinas-moral-political
    View source passageHide passage
    Conscience in Aquinas’ view is not a special power or presence within us, but is our practical intelligence at work, primarily in the form of a stock of judgments about the reasonableness (rightness) or unreasonableness (wrongness) of kinds of action (kinds of option). Since each such judgment is of the form “[It is true that] action of the kind phi is always [or generally] wrong [or: is generally to be done, etc.]” or “phi is [always] [or: generally] required [or forbidden] by reason”, it must
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit