joe1776
Well-Known Member
I'm defining conscience here as moral intuition emerging instantly from the unconscious when a specific moral situation is encountered. Conscience is a moral guide only. We can follow it or ignore it.
This is a brief argument supporting my claim that conscience is the only moral authority that we humans have. It concludes that criminal laws and the moral advice of theologians and philosophers should be abandoned because they are unnecessary at best and they create biases, capable of sending judgment off course, at their worst.
Learning begins with the senses: An effect (as in cause-and-effect) must first be sensed. It must be seen, tasted, smelled, heard or felt before we can use reasoning to learn from it. Science, humanity's best attempt at learning, must begin with an observed effect.
Since the difference between right and wrong and fair and unfair can't be seen, tasted, smelled or heard, it must be 'felt.' We feel an unpleasant sensation produced by the pain function of our brains which can be interpreted as 'wrong' or 'unfair' depending on the situation. If we don't feel that signal, we can assume the act was justified or fair. We call this faculty 'conscience.'
Conscience, emerging from the unconscious, is a remarkable faculty. It's able to render immediate judgments despite the fact that the situations it encounters are as unique and plentiful as snowflakes.
So, everything we humans know about morality, we learned from feeling the effects -- the judgments about right, wrong, fair and unfair -- produced by the moral intuitive sense that we call 'conscience.'
Now, here's where we went wrong.
There's no question that reason is a very useful function, but we arrogant humans are much too proud of it. This phenomenon has been referred to as 'reason worship.' Having learned from conscience, we illogically decided that we could improve upon the judgments of conscience by writing moral rules and laws. It was a very foolish thing to do.
We can write general rules, like "It's generally wrong to kill." But general rules are useless as guidance because the guidance is needed in specific situations -- which might be exceptions to the rule.
We can write absolute rules which offer guidance in specific situations but there is no act, killing, stealing or any other that is always wrong. So, in order to write criminal laws, lawmakers have attempted to write absolute laws covering every conceivable moral situation.
The criminal laws in the USA have a history that goes back a thousand years, to English Common Law. The books fill library shelves. They have been edited countless times over the years when their judgments conflicted with conscience. And yet, they are very different in all 50 states. In cases where the facts are not clearly one-sided, a killing which will be found murder in 25 states, can be justifiable self-defense in the other 25.
Writing absolute laws to cover every situation is a foolish, impossible task. It's also unnecessary because conscience can make the right calls in every conceivable situation.
The judgments of conscience are not subjective. They are unlike opinions on art, music or architecture. The conscience of the majority of a group of people unbiased on the relevant case is the standard for judgment. This unbiased group might be a jury in a courtroom or, in the case of the 9/11 attack in New York, the citizens of nations not involved in the attack would constitute an unbiased group. The worldwide sympathy from uninvolved nations for the USA's loss was the objective moral judgment on 9/11 as a criminal act.
In making moral judgments, reason's function is mainly to get the facts of the case straight. There is just one exception: In a moral dilemma, conscience will instantly determine that both of the optional actions feel wrong. However, conscience doesn't have the ability to weigh the consequences of each action, so reason will weigh the consequences of both optional, harmful actions in order to choose the option which does the least harm.
This is a brief argument supporting my claim that conscience is the only moral authority that we humans have. It concludes that criminal laws and the moral advice of theologians and philosophers should be abandoned because they are unnecessary at best and they create biases, capable of sending judgment off course, at their worst.
Learning begins with the senses: An effect (as in cause-and-effect) must first be sensed. It must be seen, tasted, smelled, heard or felt before we can use reasoning to learn from it. Science, humanity's best attempt at learning, must begin with an observed effect.
Since the difference between right and wrong and fair and unfair can't be seen, tasted, smelled or heard, it must be 'felt.' We feel an unpleasant sensation produced by the pain function of our brains which can be interpreted as 'wrong' or 'unfair' depending on the situation. If we don't feel that signal, we can assume the act was justified or fair. We call this faculty 'conscience.'
Conscience, emerging from the unconscious, is a remarkable faculty. It's able to render immediate judgments despite the fact that the situations it encounters are as unique and plentiful as snowflakes.
So, everything we humans know about morality, we learned from feeling the effects -- the judgments about right, wrong, fair and unfair -- produced by the moral intuitive sense that we call 'conscience.'
Now, here's where we went wrong.
There's no question that reason is a very useful function, but we arrogant humans are much too proud of it. This phenomenon has been referred to as 'reason worship.' Having learned from conscience, we illogically decided that we could improve upon the judgments of conscience by writing moral rules and laws. It was a very foolish thing to do.
We can write general rules, like "It's generally wrong to kill." But general rules are useless as guidance because the guidance is needed in specific situations -- which might be exceptions to the rule.
We can write absolute rules which offer guidance in specific situations but there is no act, killing, stealing or any other that is always wrong. So, in order to write criminal laws, lawmakers have attempted to write absolute laws covering every conceivable moral situation.
The criminal laws in the USA have a history that goes back a thousand years, to English Common Law. The books fill library shelves. They have been edited countless times over the years when their judgments conflicted with conscience. And yet, they are very different in all 50 states. In cases where the facts are not clearly one-sided, a killing which will be found murder in 25 states, can be justifiable self-defense in the other 25.
Writing absolute laws to cover every situation is a foolish, impossible task. It's also unnecessary because conscience can make the right calls in every conceivable situation.
The judgments of conscience are not subjective. They are unlike opinions on art, music or architecture. The conscience of the majority of a group of people unbiased on the relevant case is the standard for judgment. This unbiased group might be a jury in a courtroom or, in the case of the 9/11 attack in New York, the citizens of nations not involved in the attack would constitute an unbiased group. The worldwide sympathy from uninvolved nations for the USA's loss was the objective moral judgment on 9/11 as a criminal act.
In making moral judgments, reason's function is mainly to get the facts of the case straight. There is just one exception: In a moral dilemma, conscience will instantly determine that both of the optional actions feel wrong. However, conscience doesn't have the ability to weigh the consequences of each action, so reason will weigh the consequences of both optional, harmful actions in order to choose the option which does the least harm.
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