What is your conscience?

[needimprovement]

Many small children are familiar with the story of Jimminy Cricket who tells Pinocchio always to let his conscience be his guide. The wisdom of this advice hits people as they grow older.

 

So "What is your conscience?"

Edited August 26, 2010 by needimprovement

[pioneer]

The conscience is that part of the mind which considered our actions in the context of others (group) and not just the self. It might be based on love your neighbor. For example, you are hungry and see a large piece of cake in the fridge. You can eat it all, but you think about the other people in the house, and leave some for them. If one lacks a conscience, they do not have the capacity to see beyond their own needs and impulses. They would just eat all the cake. It might not even dawn on them that their behavior impacts others. This takes less brain.

[Edtharan]

We have dedicated neuons in the brain that aid us in understanding the motivations, needs, actions and thoughts of others. These are called Mirror Neurons and are essential in our brain's "Theory of Mind" (which is us knowing that other people are different to us and have different needs and desires and see the world differently). This Theory of Mind allows us to see the world from another person's perspective, and we can "put ourselves into their shoes" (so to speak) and look at the world how they would see it, including seeing our own actions from their view point.

 

The upshot is that we can know that certain actions would annoy us, and we can see that if we performed those actions, it would annoy others equally.

 

As a social species with a large group size cna complex interactions, this is an essential skill to have and any advantage one has with this will convey quiate a significant advantage to those that have it. It means that they can better co-operate as a group and have less infighting among them (so more energy is able to be spent achieving goals).

 

So the Conscience is the brain's "trick" to help us work together as a social species.

[needimprovement]

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

 

 

I. THE JUDGMENT OF CONSCIENCE

1777 Moral conscience, present at the heart of the person, enjoins him at the appropriate moment to do good and to avoid evil. It also judges particular choices, approving those that are good and denouncing those that are evil. It bears witness to the authority of truth in reference to the supreme Good to which the human person is drawn, and it welcomes the commandments. When he listens to his conscience, the prudent man can hear God speaking.

 

 

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Moderator Note

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[Marat]

I think that the flaw in that Christian view of conscience is that a few formulations of its definition put too much weight on its derivation from external authorities into which the mind of the subject has no insight, which the person cannot understand, but which the subject merely obeys. Obedience to an alien dictate whose reasons are not perfectly comprehensible, and which thus do not fully command the obedience of the person addressed by their rationally persuasive force is simply the abdication of reason. In contrast, true obedience to the dictates of conscience, to be meaningful, has to arise from the inner conviction of people who choose to obey because they are convinced of the moral validity of what they commit themselves to.

[pioneer]

In contrast, true obedience to the dictates of conscience, to be meaningful, has to arise from the inner conviction of people who choose to obey because they are convinced of the moral validity of what they commit themselves to.

 

When one begins to rationalize their conscience is when one also learns how to ignore it. The conscience is connected to collective humanity. For example, the Nazi's reasoned their right to world dominance and from that gained a moral conviction that the ends justified the means; natural selection. There were many smart people who bought in. The conscience uses the main frame of the brain, while the ego and makes use of a terminal. The Nazis left the collective human realm of the mainframe, in favor of a terminal process; lost collective empathy in favor of a terminal doctrine.

 

Most people can empathize with collective human experiences. But once we add unique terminal processes, there is a barrier for the conscience. I can empathize with the loss of a loved one. The language and culture does not matter if I know this is the situation, since this is collective human experience. Once this becomes language specific and no longer collective, the use of the conscience can break down. For example, say I needed translate, before I knew what to empathize. I can't empathize right away. It may look like I have no conscience to these language specific terminal processes.

 

The god connection to conscience implies the mainframe not a terminal. It also defines collective so the translation link is easier to maintain.

 

For example, someone may hate chocolate and the next person loves it; two terminal processes. My conscience tries to empathize with both via sharing. But now I first need to know which is which before I can empathize with these two terminal processes. One terminal may interpret my sharing as good and the other as my being inconsiderate without a (terminal) conscience. So rather than just be natural with the main frame and share, I need to repress that and learn at the terminal level. That becomes faddish and is rarely collective humanity.

Edited August 22, 2010 by pioneer

[cypress]

 

As a social species with a large group size cna complex interactions, this is an essential skill to have and any advantage one has with this will convey quiate a significant advantage to those that have it. It means that they can better co-operate as a group and have less infighting among them (so more energy is able to be spent achieving goals).

 

So the Conscience is the brain's "trick" to help us work together as a social species.

 

What information is available to identify that conscience is due to physical differences related to inheritance rather than due to social differences that drive different behaviors? I have seen studies that show that the brain functional patterns are different for various behaviors but it does not seem clear that these are driven by genetic factors. If there are physical differences, how can we know they are due to genetic and developmental influences as opposed to changes influenced by behavior?

[needimprovement]

I think that the flaw in that Christian view of conscience is that a few formulations of its definition put too much weight on its derivation from external authorities into which the mind of the subject has no insight, which the person cannot understand, but which the subject merely obeys. Obedience to an alien dictate whose reasons are not perfectly comprehensible, and which thus do not fully command the obedience of the person addressed by their rationally persuasive force is simply the abdication of reason. In contrast, true obedience to the dictates of conscience, to be meaningful, has to arise from the inner conviction of people who choose to obey because they are convinced of the moral validity of what they commit themselves to.

Yes, that is known as moral relativism and rejects the notion of objective truth. Being guided towards objective truth in no way an abdication of reason. One can always choose whether or not to follow and discern what is objectively true or to follow their own convictions. But once you go down that road then one person's conviction is as good as the next's. As a Catholic we cannot adhere to moral relativism since that very theory refutes itself. It's basically saying that something is true because I think that it is. That statement in and of itself can never be true if even one other person believes otherwise.

[Marat]

No, since I said my own 'reasoning,' not my own 'arational whim,' determines my conscience, my position does not amount to moral relativism. When I reach a conclusion which guides my conscience it is always based on objective facts or logical inferences which I believe I could explain or justify to other people, since I believe that moral values necessarily make claims to objective validity.

 

A judgment of taste, such as that ice cream is 'better' than salad, admits from the outset that it is entirely subjective: in making that statement, I don't expect that anyone else should agree with me. But if I say that my own conscience, when rationally examined according to my own values, tells me that murder is wrong, I am not stating a subjective judgment of taste, but an objective judgment of value.

[Sisyphus]

It's basically saying that something is true because I think that it is.

 

That is what a Catholic does, also. It's just that the something that he says is true is the doctrine of the church. We all follow our own convictions - we don't have a choice. The difference is just how we arrive at those convictions (our own reasoning, trust in some else's, etc.) and how certain we are of their infallibility.

[Edtharan]

What information is available to identify that conscience is due to physical differences related to inheritance rather than due to social differences that drive different behaviors? I have seen studies that show that the brain functional patterns are different for various behaviors but it does not seem clear that these are driven by genetic factors. If there are physical differences, how can we know they are due to genetic and developmental influences as opposed to changes influenced by behavior?

I don't personally thnink that these behaviours are going to be explicit in the genes of people, but the capacity to have them will be (ie: complex brains that are capable of learning and modifying behaviours - either inherited or previously learned).

 

SOme of what one would expect to see in such brains are such structures that allow us to understand others (as mirror neurons have been seen, this has been confirmed), reward pathways that reinforce "good" behaviours (and by good I mean ones that are good for the group) and group forming behaviours (humans are a herd animal).

 

So the elements that I would expect to see that contribute to the foundations of a morality system being evolved in humans are there.

[needimprovement]

No, since I said my own 'reasoning,' not my own 'arational whim,' determines my conscience, my position does not amount to moral relativism. When I reach a conclusion which guides my conscience it is always based on objective facts or logical inferences which I believe I could explain or justify to other people, since I believe that moral values necessarily make claims to objective validity.

 

A judgment of taste, such as that ice cream is 'better' than salad, admits from the outset that it is entirely subjective: in making that statement, I don't expect that anyone else should agree with me. But if I say that my own conscience, when rationally examined according to my own values, tells me that murder is wrong, I am not stating a subjective judgment of taste, but an objective judgment of value.

So then, what specifically is your beef with the catechism's description of conscience? You said, "When I reach a conclusion which guides my conscience it is always based on objective facts or logical inferences which I believe I could explain or justify to other people, since I believe that moral values necessarily make claims to objective validity". Isn't this what the Church is saying? Aren't objective facts those facts which need to be explained to others in order for them to have the same moral values that will result in objective reality? You seem to be claiming the very thing that you initially resisted............

 

But if I say that my own conscience, when rationally examined according to my own values, tells me that murder is wrong, I am not stating a subjective judgment of taste, but an objective judgment of value.

In this statement you just claim that a subjective idea can lead to an objective conclusion. This seems to contradict itself unless your values were derived from an objectively truthful source. I believe that this is what the catechism is alluding to ....

[Edtharan]

Yes, that is known as moral relativism and rejects the notion of objective truth. Being guided towards objective truth in no way an abdication of reason. One can always choose whether or not to follow and discern what is objectively true or to follow their own convictions. But once you go down that road then one person's conviction is as good as the next's. As a Catholic we cannot adhere to moral relativism since that very theory refutes itself. It's basically saying that something is true because I think that it is. That statement in and of itself can never be true if even one other person believes otherwise.

This is a misrepresentation of moral relitivism. The key work in that is "reletivism", that is morality is relative to the context. It is not arbitary, so claimning that one person's conviction is as good as the next (in terms of morality) is not a function of moral relitivism.

 

Moarl Relitivism says that there is no absolute moral code, but that morality is based on the context (the social structure and the forces that govern social structures).

 

The basic thing about social species (like humans) is that we can not survive alone. If you were to put a single human into the wild without any support from other (including tools), then even with a high level of training, this person would not last long. So as a social species, we need other members of our species to survive.

 

What this means is that if a group falls apart for some reason (eg: because of a lack of trust between members of the group), then the perople in that groups will have to survive alone or find another group to join (but if it was their behaviours that destroyed the first group, then this second group would fall apart too).

 

This means that the first 2 rules of a society is:

1) The society must work to support the members of that society

2) The members of the society must contribut to the society

 

It is the recipricol relationship between the society as a gestalt and the individual members of that society that give a society its robustness and it power.

 

This is where morality comes from. Morality are huristics that help the members of a group form a stable society. If a behaviour is disruptive to that society, then it is an imoral behaviour.

 

The other thing to note is that part of what makes a society stable is the ability to identify interlopers and to weed out freeloaders (those that could, but don't contribute to a society). What this means is that a group will need to form arbitary signalling behaviours that identify members of that society to one another. The reason they need to be arbitary is that if they were rational or logical, then it would be easy for an interloper to work out what these signals were (because they could reason them out using logic) and fake being in the society.

 

As for the freeloaders, what becomes necesary is that some of these signaling behaviours needs to have some cost involved so that a freeloader can not keep freeloading without paying this cost, but as they are freeloading, then they can not par the cost and thus can be identified.

 

Think about it: We use strange and weird behaviours to identify with a group such as wearing certain colours of cloathing, or wearing certain articles of clothing (remember flaired pants, or the bustle for women, etc) that to someone not familiar with the society would not imediately guess their imporwtance, and we have fashions that change quite rapidly that means a freeloader would not be able to keep up and thus reveal their status as freeloaders.

 

If you give it just a moment of thought, these conditions (stability of the society) can explain virtually all the morality we have (there are a few that can't be explained by modern requiermnets, but these behaviours can be traced back to earlier times when the behaviours were relevent to the society - such as hygene behaviours and such).

 

And this is what Moral relitivism is about. They are not arbitary oppinions as you stated, but are behaviours and huristics that help stabilise a society.

[Mr Skeptic]

In this statement you just claim that a subjective idea can lead to an objective conclusion. This seems to contradict itself unless your values were derived from an objectively truthful source. I believe that this is what the catechism is alluding to ....

 

Values are subjective. So long as you know someone's values, you can objectively derive moral behaviors to maximize those values. For example, if I know someone who's values are doing whatever the Catholic Church says is good, then I can objectively derive moral behaviors from those values, even ones that they didn't think of themselves and then convince them of them through reasoning.

[Marat]

For an example of what I mean by a non-religious form of conscience which makes claim to objective validity but which does not regard any given fable, story, dogma, belief, or superstition as its source, consider Kant's derivation of morality.

 

We can only speak of praise and blame if we assume that people are free so that they can deserve praise or blame. But we know that science says that everything in the physical world is causally determined. So to escape causality and ensure that our actions can deserve praise or blame we have to act according to conceptual commands we give ourselves which transcend our selfish interests to ensure that they do not just arise from the causal promptings of material appetites, desires, and selfishness. The best way to ensure that these commands are not selfish and causally determined is to fashion these commands so that they respect the equal freedom of other people, since this will restrict our doing what we naturally want to do, which will lift us above our causal conditioning, especially since our actions will be determined by the ideal concept of respect for human equality and freedom, rather than by the causal, material drive to satisfy our own needs. So we become moral and free in the same single step by respecting the equal freedom of all other people.

 

Now because this argument is an appeal to the rationality of everyone, it is objective in the sense of making an intersubjective appeal. The Kantian is not saying here that this is just what I believe, but is instead arguing that logic shows that this is what you should believe as well, because it is valid for everyone. But the Kantian is also not saying that I believe this because I worship Kant who told me to believe this. Rather, he is saying I believe this because it makes sense, and for that reason you should believe it as well.

 

In short, to be objectively valid something doesn't have to be propped up by some thing -- whether imaginary or not -- which supports its existence in the real world. Something can be objectively valid simply by being based on an argument that makes sense.

[needimprovement]

But we know that science says that everything in the physical world is causally determined.

Can you give some reference for this suggestion?

[Marat]

That is actually Kant's starting point for this reasoning, so it reflects the view of late 18th century natural science, which of course hadn't anticipated the questions about universal causality posed by Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle, Copenhagen quantum mechanics, etc. But many theorists have argued in recent years that even these new discoveries don't undermine the basic premise that natural science is the science of causes.

 

Ever since the 17th century, it was accepted as axiomatic that hylozoism, saying for example that an apple fell from a tree because it just wanted to, or that the Moon orbits the Earth because its inner nature compels it to, is the death of scientific explanation. Science essentially operates by explaining events in terms of relations extending into quantifiable contexts of time and space, and the external relations among objects which are quantifiable in spatio-temporal terms are causal. Aristotelian physics said that things moved because they tended to flee toward their natural place in the universe, which for fire was up and for matter was down. But the great advance to modern physics by Newton and others was to insist that things move because something else collides with them to cause them to move.

 

Just about any work on the philosophy of science will discuss the view that causal accounts are the essence of scientific explanation.

[needimprovement]

For an example of what I mean by a non-religious form of conscience which makes claim to objective validity but which does not regard any given fable, story, dogma, belief, or superstition as its source, consider Kant's derivation of morality.

 

We can only speak of praise and blame if we assume that people are free so that they can deserve praise or blame. But we know that science says that everything in the physical world is causally determined. So to escape causality and ensure that our actions can deserve praise or blame we have to act according to conceptual commands we give ourselves which transcend our selfish interests to ensure that they do not just arise from the causal promptings of material appetites, desires, and selfishness. The best way to ensure that these commands are not selfish and causally determined is to fashion these commands so that they respect the equal freedom of other people, since this will restrict our doing what we naturally want to do, which will lift us above our causal conditioning, especially since our actions will be determined by the ideal concept of respect for human equality and freedom, rather than by the causal, material drive to satisfy our own needs. So we become moral and free in the same single step by respecting the equal freedom of all other people.

 

Now because this argument is an appeal to the rationality of everyone, it is objective in the sense of making an intersubjective appeal. The Kantian is not saying here that this is just what I believe, but is instead arguing that logic shows that this is what you should believe as well, because it is valid for everyone. But the Kantian is also not saying that I believe this because I worship Kant who told me to believe this. Rather, he is saying I believe this because it makes sense, and for that reason you should believe it as well.

 

In short, to be objectively valid something doesn't have to be propped up by some thing -- whether imaginary or not -- which supports its existence in the real world. Something can be objectively valid simply by being based on an argument that makes sense.

In a sense, freedom is related to law in the same way a lake is related to the shore that contains it. Just as the shore gives the lake shape, holds it in its boundaries, so law gives shape to our freedom and marks off its boundaries. Law is then a binding rule of conduct which serves to give shape and direction to our freedom.

 

Another preliminary observation about law would be that in the last analysis, our conscience is the final lawgiver. Our conscience, however, must be properly formed and work in conjunction with reality outside ourselves, especially with regard to the obligations that arise in our relationships with God and others. However, "the law" (e.g. Natural Law, Civil Law, Divine Law, Church Law, etc) is a whole new thread.

[Marat]

It is certainly true that in a universe in which there were no constraints to give shape to the will by confining it, we would never be able to become aware of being either free or unfree. But what gives shape to our awareness of will doesn't have to be law, and certainly not law from some superstitious source. Instead it could take shape from any constraint, such as the resistance of matter to what we want to do with it, for example.

 

I agree that by definition, conscience as opposed to subjective whim has to be essentially related to objectivity. But here again, the relation of conscience to the objective world can be just to facts, to rational arguments about how we should lead our lives in a social setting so that we can all thrive together, or to publicly demonstrable reasons about the proper way to act. The objective anchor of conscience required to distinguish it from any purely subjective mental state need not be in some theological entity or dogma.

[Severian]

A good rule of thumb is, if you are enjoying doing something it is probably immoral.

[jimmydasaint]

Getting back to the O.P., are there people without a conscience? Or people who can suppress their conscience so that the death of millions would bother them less than a slight headache? Is conscience inherited or learned, or both?