Is a person born with a conscience? How can we be sure? Is it possible for an infant to communicate with itself (like we use our conscience for)? Thanks
I believe that the current thinking (at least from a psychological point of view) is that infants are NOT born with a conscience, but instead with the ability to develop one.
The self awareness that’s associated with a conscience I believe starts to develop around age 4 or 5 - that’s the time when children can reasonably expected to have an notion about others feelings and whatnot.
Sociopaths never develop their conscience - this may be because they don’t have the wiring to do so, or because of an enviromental factor later on.
I’ve seen some pediatric and child dev theory stuff that establishes the onset age for caring about how others feel and how your actions affect them at a ridiculously late age.
Alice in Wonderland’s estimate sounds more reasonable. Kids even younger than that are capable of feeling sorry for someone or caring about someone (more than once mothers have told me of crying in the presence of their very young children and having them respond by offering them a toy or their baby bottle, is that cute or what?), but it probably takes a little longer to get the knack of stepping outside yourself and seeing how your own actions might make others feel.
There was a study a few months ago that showed that monkeys had a sense of fair play. This makes me believe that a conscience might be hard-wired in higher primates, at least.
I wonder if infants do not display it until a later age not because they lack it, but because they aren’t able to recognize and understand their surroundings well enough yet to read other’s feelings.
Well, IMHO, babies don’t care if mom is tired, when they’re crying 'cus they have a dirty diaper, or they’re hungry, or they just feel like crying, that’s pretty much using up all of the mental faculties they currently have.
I would argue that not being able to recognize and understand other’s feelings is pretty much a definition of “no conscience”. Fortunatly, most children develop this as they get older. I would also suggest that primates are probably pretty much the same in this regard - there have certainly been documented cases of anti-social behaviour in bonobos (or chimps - I honestly can’t remember just off the top of my head) but generally they behave in a social sort of way, similar to humans.
So? Conscience might still be a learned - perhaps even taught - set of behaviors in all primates, including humans.
I’m wary of arguments that assume a behavior is hard-wired, has nothing to do with self-awareness, or is not taught just because a monkey or a bird can do it.
I wouldn’t, because I feel there’s big difference in not realizing a person is sad, and knowing it and not caring. The former is a failure of the senses, only the latter is a lack of conscience.
Or possibly a combination of both. I think that’s why most nature or nurture arguments are unconvincing, because it’s rarely if ever one or the other, but a mixture of both.
It would probably be more accurate to say that infants are born with the potential for a conscience in the same sense that infants are born with the potential for language or the potential for walking. They don’t have to be explicitly taught. They will pick it up on their own as long as they are part of a functioning society, but it’s not until age 3 or 4 that they actually understand that other people are even different entities.
Given that, I would be very comfortable saying people are NOT born with a conscience.
I would think that to have a conscience, one would need the ability to relate to the person in question. Hence people-- those with consciences-- having such an easy time killing what they can’t easily relate to. 
I don’t know animal psychology, but I anxiously await the many Dopers that do! 
Thanks.
If I may quote dictionary.com:
If an infant does not posess the awareness to know if an action is right or wrong, then they don’t posess a conscience. It doesn’t mean that all little bitty babies are sociopaths - it just means that particular part of the psyche isn’t developed.
As I said in my first post - they have the potential to develop a conscience, but a creature that can only care about it’s own immediate needs does not have a conscience.
So if a deaf and blind person doesn’t know I’m crying because of their sensory difficulties, they don’t have a conscience?
Surely one must distinguish between unawareness due to other reasons than a lack of conscience. I see an infants undeveloped senses or understanding of the senses not a lack of conscience, but analagous to a lack of senses. It’s not necessarily a lack of conscience.
Revtim, I don’t mean to patronize you, but babies not having a conscience is a bad thing. They just don’t. The development of a sense of self and later, the development of a conscience just happen to be two important factors of mental growth. It is a lack of conscience.
The deaf-and-blind people of the world percieve the others around as people too, though, and that’s a major aspect of having a conscience.
I don’t think it’s good or bad thing.
I just see that just because a being may not have the senses (or understanding of the sensory input) to understand a situation enough for the conscience to come into play is very different from not having a conscience at all.
Maybe they don’t have a conscience, I don’t know enough to make a firm decision either way.
But to ignore the fact that they might not understand the situation that calls for a conscience and assume they haven’t one is faulty logic.
It’s like assuming a person doesn’t know how to play chess, without taking into account that they cannot see or reach the chessboard.
Sorry, I don’t have a cite, but I’m pretty certain I read articles on this topic, stating that babies become able to distinguish between “me” and “not me” much earlier than that (I seem to remember it’s when they are some months old). Which doesn’t mean that they would be able to emphatize with other people or perceive their feelings, but that they would be aware that mom or the craddle aren’t part of them, while their hand is.
Also, it seems to me that to be able to communicate and for instance ask for something, or wishing to share one’s feelings, one must understand that the other person is a different entity. And babies begin to speak much earlier than 3 or 4.
I agree with John Mace’s general premise. Babies are not born with a conscience, but the programming to develop one. Wanton disregard for a fellow being does not seem to make much sense on a survival scale. Animals get into scraps, but they know when not to. I can’t imagine that this is all just a preservation device. There has to be some sort of “golden rule” ingrained in animals in order to ensure a measure of civility, or at least prevent killings for the fun of it.
I would assume that life and death situations would be the only ones that would apply here, since social matters are not of as much import.
Babies aren’t born with a functional conscience. But obviously the wiring for it must be there already. The mind just hasn’t developed enough yet to make much use of it. Same thing applies to language, the ability to understand simple math, etc.
Some people are born without consciences, ( psychopaths)and by their absense, the presence of an ingrained consious in others is apparent.
We aren’t blank slates, much of our behavior is provably genetically determined.
Most of my kids have developed an ability to understand that they can hurt each other around the age of 2 1/2 or 3, along with an ability to express sympathy for hurts. This does not always translate into caring whether they hurt others, even now that they are 6 and 4.
Now, modesty…the 6 year old recently developed modesty, and can’t stand for anybody to see her “bottom”. The 4 year old twins have no modesty at all yet. If modesty counts in with the conscience, I would say it develops gradually, step by step. And as far as I can tell, at least parts of it (like modesty) develop all by themselves. We have not urged this on the 6 year old. She has become modest on her own.
On the other hand, they are also seem to be…little monstrous heathens who have to be tamed, methodically and deliberately. I say this based on the number of times I have had to intervene in slapping-hitting-screaming fights between my girls, and my nephew (age 5) is worse for degree and initiation of violence. I’m pretty sure that an unsocialised child would not grow up into an adult with much of a conscience.