In Why Tolerate Religion?, Brian Leiter argues against the special legal status of religion, claiming that religion should not be the only ground for exemptions to the law and that this form of protection should be, in principle, available for the claims of secular conscience as well. However, in the last chapter of his book, he objects to a universal regime of exemptions for both religious and...

Evolutionary theories of morality, beginning with Darwin, have focused on explanations for altruism. More generally, these accounts have concentrated on conscience (self-regulatory mechanisms) to the neglect of condemnation (mechanisms for punishing others). As a result, few theoretical tools are available for understanding the rapidly accumulating data surrounding third-party judgment and puni...

In a thought-provoking paper, Schuklenk and Smalling argue that no right to conscientious objection should be granted to medical professionals. First, they hold that it is impossible to assess either the truth of conscience-based claims or the sincerity of the objectors. Second, even a fettered right to conscientious refusal inevitably has adverse effects on the rights of patients. We argue tha...

The conception of conscience that dominates discussions in bioethics focuses narrowly on private regulation of behaviour resulting from explicit attitudes. It neglects to mention implicit attitudes and the role of social feedback in becoming aware of one's implicit attitudes. But if conscience is a way of ensuring that a person's behaviour is in line with her moral values, it must be responsive...

Despite serious challenges to the identity of Catholic health institutions in the United States, both Church and society should continue to see them as privileged places of moral discernment. This discernment occurs in “institutional conscience,” namely, a dialogue among all those authorized to act on the institution’s behalf about institutional actions, for example, medical interventions. The ...

Although conscience has been the focus of reflection for centuries, fundamental questions regarding its organization have not been fully answered. To address those questions, the authors applied structural equation modeling techniques to longitudinal data comprising multiple behavioral measures of children's conscience, obtained in parallel fashion at 33 and 45 months. The measures encompassed ...

The aims of the research presented here are as follows: (a) to define the degree of perceived meaning in life and the level of sensitivity of conscience in groups of students with a high (H) and low (L) level of experience of God’s absence; and (b) to show the relationship between perceived meaning in life and sensitivity of conscience in groups of students with a high (H) and low (L) level of ...

n engl j med 367;11 nejm.org september 13, 2012 981 provision of abortion care is also conscience-based. The persistent failure to recognize abortion provision as “conscientious” has resulted in laws that do not protect caregivers who are compelled by conscience to provide abortion services, contributes to the ongoing stigmatization of abortion providers, and leaves theoretical and practical bl...

This article examines the ethical and legal implications of conscience clauses, which allow pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for oral contraceptives due to their belief that they may constitute abortifacients. The author provides an informative background on contraception and the history of how abortion has been viewed in this country, then takes a critical look at some of the consci...