joe1776
Well-Known Member
The judgments of conscience are simple phenomena.
Is this specific action morally right or wrong?
Is this specific action fair or unfair?
Upon hearing the facts of a specific act, the judgments of conscience are immediate. If the act is morally wrong or unfair, we immediately get an unpleasant feeling of wrongfulness produced by the pain-pleasure function of our brain. The act feels wrong. If we don't get that unpleasant feeling, we can assume the specific act is fair or morally justified.
These judgments happen immediately and usually can't be reasonably explained. Research has shown that the attempts to reasonably explain the judgments occur after the judgment was made and often make no sense.
What we call the judgments of conscience are the product of intuition which emerges immediately from the unconscious. They are not the product of the slow, reasoning, conscious mind. Thus, most philosophers and theologians have, for centuries, built their arguments on a false premise.
College Psych courses still teach the moral theory of Lawrence Kohlberg which is based on this false premise the we reason our way to moral judgments even though research is confirming that our moral judgments are intuitive.
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
1778 Conscience is a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act that he is going to perform, is in the process of performing, or has already completed. In all he says and does, man is obliged to follow faithfully what he knows to be just and right. It is by the judgment of his conscience that man perceives and recognizes the prescriptions of the divine law:
That "conscience is a judgement of reason" is a false premise which allows the Church to argue that it can inform-teach the conscience by offering moral guidance to its faithful. If the judgments of conscience are intuitive as I've proposed, then conscience has to be recognized as our one and only moral authority.
However, not only the Catholic Church but all traditional religions as well as moral philosophers will be put out of the moral guidance business when the science on this topic goes mainstream.
The bottom line: An unbiased mind and the guidance of conscience are the only requirements to know the difference between right and wrong or fair and unfair.
Comments and questions?
Is this specific action morally right or wrong?
Is this specific action fair or unfair?
Upon hearing the facts of a specific act, the judgments of conscience are immediate. If the act is morally wrong or unfair, we immediately get an unpleasant feeling of wrongfulness produced by the pain-pleasure function of our brain. The act feels wrong. If we don't get that unpleasant feeling, we can assume the specific act is fair or morally justified.
These judgments happen immediately and usually can't be reasonably explained. Research has shown that the attempts to reasonably explain the judgments occur after the judgment was made and often make no sense.
What we call the judgments of conscience are the product of intuition which emerges immediately from the unconscious. They are not the product of the slow, reasoning, conscious mind. Thus, most philosophers and theologians have, for centuries, built their arguments on a false premise.
College Psych courses still teach the moral theory of Lawrence Kohlberg which is based on this false premise the we reason our way to moral judgments even though research is confirming that our moral judgments are intuitive.
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
1778 Conscience is a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act that he is going to perform, is in the process of performing, or has already completed. In all he says and does, man is obliged to follow faithfully what he knows to be just and right. It is by the judgment of his conscience that man perceives and recognizes the prescriptions of the divine law:
That "conscience is a judgement of reason" is a false premise which allows the Church to argue that it can inform-teach the conscience by offering moral guidance to its faithful. If the judgments of conscience are intuitive as I've proposed, then conscience has to be recognized as our one and only moral authority.
However, not only the Catholic Church but all traditional religions as well as moral philosophers will be put out of the moral guidance business when the science on this topic goes mainstream.
The bottom line: An unbiased mind and the guidance of conscience are the only requirements to know the difference between right and wrong or fair and unfair.
Comments and questions?