Ethics

A young man got very hungry and bought himself a donut with all the money he had left. He needs to eat, otherwise he might collapse. Just before putting the donut into his mouth, a beggar who has not eaten anything decent in days asks for his donut. Being a fervent Catholic and a reader of the Bible, he was taught that he ought to feed the hungry. The child is hungry and so is he. Inside of his consciousness is a voice telling him what to do or what not to do. That  inner voice  is what is called conscience. Confusion ensues.
Conscience is a basic sense of morality that is ingrained in all of man. It guides people s actions into doing what is good. Unfortunately, the good to be done is not always clear in every situation. No piece of literature sometimes could ever clarify the good to be done because what people know of the good is limited.  Conscience therefore have been subject to several interpretations but in essence it can be characterized as an inner voice speaking of a  moral imperative  derived from outside sources of morality but is at the end free from those sources and highly dependent on the individual with the said conscience.
When the good to be done is not always clear, different moral imperatives present themselves. For instance, in the example in the beginning of this literature, a young man is confused about whether he should eat the donut or not. The bible says that he should feed the hungry but both of them are hungry. Some philosopher like Emmanuel Levinas (1969) might say that he should have a greater sense of responsibility toward the  Other . However, for himself, who needs to eat so that he may do his job well and earn so that he may feed his siblings, hence should eat first.  To the end, his action or decision is his and his alone.
From the previous discussion we may therefore agree with T. O Connell s argument that conscience has three facets that he, for convenience, called conscience 1, conscience 2, and conscience 3. Conscience 1 refers to the definition we gave earlier about it being a basic sense of morality. The second one is the aspect of conscience where confusion ensues. It is the basic responsibility of a person to educate himself about the good to be done in different situations and not just say that this is always the good to be done because the law or the Bible says so. This leads the person to examine critical contemporary issues such as homosexuality, same-sex marriage, divorce, masturbation, climate change policies, increasing taxes and death penalties. A person must not settle for what the Bible says and read it at face value. The Bible may have used a figure of speech. Nor should he merely rely on a philosopher s ramblings, a teacher s lecture or a parent s warning. Conscience 2 therefore refers to the aspect of conscience where the individual is presented with different moral imperatives with the main moral imperative of educating oneself in what is ought to be done. The third one refers to the action, the moment of decision that accompanies the voice. 
In many cases, it has been said that the good and what ought to be is relative because different cultures, a clash of beliefs and others. Some say however that the absolute truth has been presented to us through the Holy Bible. Again, conscience is at play as to which claim should be believed in. Again, confusion ensues.