Conscience: Simple, Powerful, Infallible

[joe1776]

Oh we feel something. But whether what we feel is right or wrong is debatable. I am sure Islamic terrorists do what they do out of their sense of moral outrage towards us as they see it.
Our emotional I instincts are primitive and utterly incapable of dealing with anything over an informal family or in-group. That is also something that studies show. Stanford prison experiment comes to mind. So no, conscience is simply an emotional instinct that hones in on what we think is already true about right or wrong. And what people think is true about right or wrong changes drastically from person to person and across history.

Do you think a group of unbiased minds would involved themselves in a terrorist act? If not, why not conclude that terrorists must do what they do because of a bias? What's wrong with that logic?

We know intuitively that the man who is extremely proud of being Irish and Catholic would be just as proud if, by chance, he had been raised to think of himself as German and Lutheran. You see, he thinks of his groups as wonderful because they're his groups and he is wonderful.

Group pride is disguised arrogance and group prejudice is the opposite side of the coin. When one group draws first blood in an attack, I place the blame on the arrogance bias not on a flawed conscience.

If we blame conscience for our bad behavior. We have no mechanism for change when we make moral progress. I credit serious examinations of conscience for the abolition of slavery, child labor laws, and the equal rights movement for women, minorities and homosexuals.

 

[joe1776]

Yet there must be something missing necessarily to make conscience more, informed, potent and with more integrity than it is.

I think the only thing missing is the knowledge of how to use it. For example, we humans seem to be very proud of our ability to reason -- too proud. I think the products of reason, like moral rules, laws and commandment, are potential biases capable of throwing moral judgments off course.

Thanks for the link. I checked out the face page. It looks interesting. When I have time, I'll go back.

 

[sayak83]

Do you think a group of unbiased minds would involved themselves in a terrorist act? If not, why not conclude that terrorists must do what they do because of a bias? What's wrong with that logic?

We know intuitively that the man who is extremely proud of being Irish and Catholic would be just as proud if, by chance, he had been raised to think of himself as German and Lutheran. You see, he thinks of his groups as wonderful because they're his groups and he is wonderful.

Group pride is disguised arrogance and group prejudice is the opposite side of the coin. When one group draws first blood in an attack, I place the blame on the arrogance bias not on a flawed conscience.

If we blame conscience for our bad behavior. We have no mechanism for change when we make moral progress. I credit serious examinations of conscience for the abolition of slavery, child labor laws, and the equal rights movement for women, minorities and homosexuals.

You are proposing something vacuous. Whenever someones emotional instincts deviate from what you think is right or wrong, you will attribute it to bias on their part. I might as well charge that ANY emotional reaction to any morally relevant act at all is a bias and all forms of moral feelings are forms of preset or learned biases. Thus all moral judgment based on what you call conscience is just bias trying to justify itself.

No, you will have to present an argument as to why emotional feeling Y regarding moral act X is a bias while emotional feeling Z regarding the same moral act X is conscience without relying on predetermined ideas of what you think to be right and wrong. Then and only then can you make conscience more basic than ideas of morality and from which you can construct the latter.

 

[joe1776]

You are proposing something vacuous.

When there are just two options to explain the cause of a moral failure, why is it vacuous for me to take the position that biases are at fault, but not vacuous for you to take the position that conscience is at fault?

I have moral progress to back my position. There have been many moral upgrades over the centuries, but I'll focus on slavery. I claim that slavery was caused by the need to feel superior to others, a bias commonly known as arrogance. When slavery was abolished, a serious examination of conscience had taken place and spread from mind to mind to make it happen. This is a credible explanation.

Can you provide a credible explanation? If slavery was just one feature in humanity's flawed conscience, what caused the change?

I have more:

In criminal cases pretty much the world over, an unbiased jury is accepted as the best we humans can do to provide justice. Jury members don't have to be perfect beings, they must only be free of biases that are relevant to the particular case.

So, my position, accepted the world over, is that, given the true facts of a moral question, and free of bias, we humans will intuitively make the right decisions on a specific case when the question is about moral right or wrong,

 

[sayak83]

When there are just two options to explain the cause of a moral failure, why is it vacuous for me to take the position that biases are at fault, but not vacuous for you to take the position that conscience is at fault?

I have moral progress to back my position. There have been many moral upgrades over the centuries, but I'll focus on slavery. I claim that slavery was caused by the need to feel superior to others, a bias commonly known as arrogance. When it was abolished, a serious examination of conscience took place and spread from mind to mind to make it happen. This is a credible explanation.

Can you provide a credible explanation? If slavery was just one feature in humanity's flawed conscience, what changed it?

I have more:

In criminal cases pretty much the world over, an unbiased jury is accepted as the best we humans can do to provide justice. Jury members don't have to be perfect beings, they must only be free of biases that are relevant to the particular case.

So, my position, accepted the world over, is that, given the true facts of a moral question, and free of bias, we humans will intuitively make the right decisions on a specific case when the question is about moral right or wrong,

I deny that there is anything called conscience. It's just an emotional feeling associated with an individuals already present moral concepts. Those emotions, that which you call conscience, just tells an individual what his or her beliefs are regarding what is moral, and nothing whatsoever if those beliefs are actually right or wrong at a general level.

In India we do not have a jury system. I do not like the Idea of untrained jurors deciding fate of people utterly medieval and should be abolished. What one needs to do is simply have a well trained and independent judiciary where none of the appointments are done by political parties. In fact I will go as far as to say that any judiciary relying on a jury system cannot be just.

Slavery was changed by economics. Slavery collapsed because non-slave based industrial economies outcompeted slave labor based economies. Same for the serf system. The basic idea is simple. There are multiple ways to arrange relations among humans. Depending on technological state of the world, some perform better than others and these modes outcompeted others and dominate the world making those relationships the "moral conscience" of the day. And so on. It's the reason why democracy failed against monarchy in 3rd century Beach Greece and won against monarchy in 18th century CE Europe. Frankly no matter what anyone thinks, the set of relational forms that create the most robust society within a specific technological setting will establish itself always. What happens in any human society is that there are variant ideas of how these relationships should work and if one variation is decidedly better than others in growth, wealth generation, power, satisfaction etc. it gets adopted by more and more people by selfish considerations (along with other motives of course) and become the moral intuitions of the day.... till the technology shifts again. Morality is a form of social technology, a very important one, but still a technology.

 

[joe1776]

I deny that there is anything called conscience.

So, you deny the existence of conscience? I guess scientific research probably wouldn't change you mind either would it?

Over the past twenty years, there has been growing evidence for a universally shared moral faculty based on findings in evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, anthropology, economics, linguistics, and neurobiology -- findings Harvard Moral Sense Test

I don't like untrained juries either. They are perfectly fine on questions of conscience,because conscience isn't a function of the reasoning mind, but they're weak on questions of fact. I'd like to see the USA go to professional jury system.

Slavery was changed by economics? I see. How could those slave masters compete with employers paying wages and providing other benefits to employees as they do today?

 

[sayak83]

So, you deny the existence of conscience? I guess scientific research probably wouldn't change you mind either would it?

Over the past twenty years, there has been growing evidence for a universally shared moral faculty based on findings in evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, anthropology, economics, linguistics, and neurobiology -- findings Harvard Moral Sense Test

I don't like untrained juries either. They are perfectly fine on questions of conscience, but they're weak on questions of fact. I'd like to see the USA go to professional jury system.

Slavery was changed by economics? I see. How could those slave masters compete with employers paying wages and providing other benefits to employers as they do today?

Yes indeed, industrial productivity based on free, skilled and motivated labor outcompeted every other production system by exponential margins from 18th century onwards. Read a little economics. What you are rolling your eyes about is simply extremely well established historical truth. When machines are available to replace muscle power, one needs motivated smart labor force to increase productivity, not slaves.

That which you call moral sense falls under the rubric of empathy and reciprocal altruism and is an essential instinct that helps in group and family cohesiveness. Rats have it too.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/05/rats-forsake-chocolate-save-drowning-companion
Problem is it only works within an informal family or close informal group setting. And even there, one has widespread divergences (patriarchy, polygamy, honor systems, matriarch, communal family you name). What moral psychologists are studying and consider universal are extremely extremely rudimentary blocks out of which vastly different morality structures can be built, based on situation.... like is the case for our linguistic ability. In fact our moral intuitions are far more underdeveloped than was first suspected.

Moral Psychology: Empirical Approaches (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

At the same time, there exists a long experimental tradition in social psychology—often cited, for reasons that will become obvious, under the title of “situationism”—that unsettles the globalist notions of character central in much philosophical theorizing.[16] For example:

• Isen and Levin (1972: 387) discovered that subjects who had just found a dime were 22 times more likely to help a woman who had dropped some papers than subjects who did not find a dime (88% v. 4%).
• Darley and Batson (1973: 105) report that passersby not in a hurry were 6 times more likely to help an unfortunate who appeared to be in significant distress than were passersby in a hurry (63% v. 10%).
• Mathews and Canon (1975: 574–5) found subjects were 5 times more likely to help an apparently injured man who had dropped some books when ambient noise was at normal levels than when a power lawnmower was running nearby (80% v. 15%).
• Haney et al. (1973) describe how college students role-playing as “guards” in a simulated prison subjected student “prisoners” to intense verbal and emotional abuse.
• Milgram (1974) found that subjects would repeatedly “punish” a screaming “victim” with realistic (but simulated) electric shocks at the polite request of an experimenter.

These experiments are not aberrational, but representative: social psychologists have repeatedly found that the difference between good conduct and bad appears to reside in the situation more than the person; both disappointing omissions and appalling actions are readily induced through seemingly minor situational features. What makes these findings so striking is just how insubstantial the situational influences effecting troubling moral failures seem to be; it is not that people fail to adhere to standards for good conduct, but that the can be induced to do so with such ease. (Think about it: a dime may make the difference between compassionate and callous behavior.) At the same time, research predicated on the attribution of character and personality traits has enjoyed limited success in the prediction of behavior; standard measures of personality have very often been found to be tenuously related to behavior in particular situations where the expression of a given trait is expected.[17]

The skeptical argument suggested by the empirical record may be formulated as a modus tollens :[18]

1. If behavior is typically ordered by robust traits, systematic observation will reveal pervasive behavioral consistency.
2. Systematic observation does not reveal pervasive behavioral consistency.
3. Therefore, behavior is not typically ordered by robust traits.

If this argument is sound, a central thesis in characterological moral psychology—so long as it is committed to empirically assessable descriptive claims—is seriously undermined.

.......
The research on “heuristics and biases” described in section two is an excellent example of this, and subsequent research by Gigerenzer and associates (1999, 2000) has shown that the manifestation of heuristics like framing effects may vary quite strikingly according to minor variations in the problems cognizers face. Another suggestive line of research indicates that the salience of values is readily malleable. Gardner, Gabriel, and Lee (1999; cf. Brewer and Gardner 1996; Gardner, Gabriel, and Hochschild 2002) found that subjects “primed” by searching for first personal plural pronouns (e. g., we, ours) in a writing sample were subsequently more likely to report that “interdependent” values (belongingness, friendship, family security) were a “guiding principle in their lives” than were subjects primed by searching for first personal singularpronouns (e. g., I, mine). Apparently, what matters to people—or seems to them to matter—can be influenced by things that don't matter very much; circumstance can have a surprising and powerful impact on the experience of value and thus on episodes of practical reasoning in which such experience plays a role.

 

[Willamena]

Conscience suggests fear of consequences. Better than nothing, but only a step towards the direct connection: Intuition.
Intuition is more than simply a largely misunderstood word. It bypasses the mind, and reveals the Way.

I disagree. My little voice speaks up to tell me I'm an idiot whether I fear the consequences or not.

 

[crowfeather]

Hearing voices is something questionable at best, and all downhill from there.
Especially when the voice disagrees with you.
You raise an interesting point though: do people need to be informed of their idiocy before they themselves can detect it?
Maybe that's one way in which crows are different.

 

[Willamena]

Hearing voices is something questionable at best, and all downhill from there.
Especially when the voice disagrees with you.
You raise an interesting point though: do people need to be informed of their idiocy before they themselves can detect it?
Maybe that's one way in which crows are different.

Conscience cannot disagree with you, any more than you can disagree with your subconscious inclinations.

 

[crowfeather]

Not much use then, eh?
But these things rather defy understanding, especially when people start trying to use logic as a tool.

 

[joe1776]

Yes indeed, industrial productivity based on free, skilled and motivated labor outcompeted every other production system by exponential margins from 18th century onwards. Read a little economics. What you are rolling your eyes about is simply extremely well established historical truth. When machines are available to replace muscle power, one needs motivated smart labor force to increase productivity, not slaves.

No, that's not going to float. A cause can't happen after an effect. Slavery was abolished in many countries before machines could take their jobs.

For example, in the American South, slaves were mostly occupied with picking cotton from about 1800 to 1865 when, after a brutal civil war, slavery was abolished. The cotton gin in 1810 increased the demand for cotton and for slave labor. The first practical cotton picking machine wasn't invented until the 1930s. Before the the Civil War, the South had a thriving cotton trade, supplying some European nations as well as the US.

Would you like to try again or will you insist you're right? If not conscience, then what caused the abolition of slavery?

 

[sayak83]

No, that's not going to float. A cause can't happen after an effect. Slavery was abolished in many countries before machines could take their jobs.

For example, in the American South, slaves were mostly occupied with picking cotton from about 1800 to 1865 when, after a brutal civil war, slavery was abolished. The cotton gin in 1810 increased the demand for cotton and for slave labor. The first practical cotton picking machine wasn't invented until the 1930s. Before the the Civil War, the South had a thriving cotton trade, supplying some European nations as well as the US.

Would you like to try again or will you insist you're right? If not conscience, then what caused the abolition of slavery?

Oh the South needed the slaves that is why they were certain it was moral in their deepest conscience and fought so hard. The North did not and the fight was about which economic system is going to exist in the rapidly expanding Western States of US.

 

[whirlingmerc]

If a Loving Creator exists, and if it wanted us to have freewill along with moral guidance, we would have a simple-to-use, cross-cultural, internal moral guidance system. It's very likely that conscience is exactly that.

A bias is any preexisting belief capable of sending a judgment off its correct course. Even when we want to do the right thing morally our judgment can be thrown off course by a bias. Because of biases, the simple and powerful nature of conscience isn't obvious.

When we read the facts in a case of cold-blooded murder, we immediately feel moral outrage. That's a signal from our conscience that the act is wrong. We have to regard that judgment as infallible because conscience is the only moral authority we have.

When we write criminal laws to prohibit murder, they are unnecessary at best and biases at their worst because human acts happen in an almost infinite variety, moral situations are not an exception. Conscience is equipped to deal with those variations, the reasoning function of our brains cannot. It's not possible to write the perfect law on murder or any other kind of act.

The very same killing might be justifiable in several states in the USA but not in others. And, we're talking about laws that have a history of a thousand years, going back to English common law. The collective conscience of unbiased juries, after hearing all the facts, and unhindered by laws, would offer the best judgments on such cases.

The reasoning function of our brains is the wrong tool for dealing with moral judgments. In addition to criminal laws, interpretation of religious texts and self-made moral rules, also products of reasoning, often create biases.

The laws in the USA have been heavily influenced by interpretations of scripture from the Christian Bible. Many of those laws were and still are immoral. As we examine our conscience, issue by issue, we are getting rid of the immoral laws such as those that allowed slavery and those that deprived women, minorities and homosexuals of their equal rights.

Criminal laws could be replaced by a simple mission statement to establish the state's obligation to protect innocent citizens from serious harm. Conscience has taught us that it is wrong to intentionally harm or endanger an innocent person. That's enough to guide unbiased juries.

Conscience alone isn't compelling evidence that a Loving Creator exists, but once we understand its simple and powerful nature, it should create the suspicion.

Comments or questions?

I agree in part and disagree in part
First we do have a conscience
We can make it hardened and it is fallible and fallen
It's perceptions can be wrong

Free will? in a sense yes and no
Free will is in a sense free fall into fallen desires of the heart
You will freely choose according to the highest inclinations of the heart
even if those inclinations are fallen

 

[joe1776]

Oh the South needed the slaves that is why they were certain it was moral in their deepest conscience and fought so hard. The North did not and the fight was about which economic system is going to exist in the rapidly expanding Western States of US.

Your skill in shaping historical facts to fit an agenda could land you job in Washington politics as a spin doctor.

There was no economic competition between the states in 1860 America. Cotton was only grown in the South and provided an economic benefit to the entire county before the Civil War. The North had slaves also. There were 4,000 in Washington. Slaves built the White House.

We humans are all infected with arrogance to varying degrees. We need to feel superior to others. I think that's the bias that caused slavery, religious persecution and many other crimes throughout history.

 

[joe1776]

s

First we do have a conscience
We can make it hardened...

Conscience is supposed to offer moral guidance. If we can harden it, that would mean that we are influencing our own guidance. If you're right, conscience is not a very useful tool. Why would we have it?

 

[12jtartar]

If a Loving Creator exists, and if it wanted us to have freewill along with moral guidance, we would have a simple-to-use, cross-cultural, internal moral guidance system. It's very likely that conscience is exactly that.

A bias is any preexisting belief capable of sending a judgment off its correct course. Even when we want to do the right thing morally our judgment can be thrown off course by a bias. Because of biases, the simple and powerful nature of conscience isn't obvious.

When we read the facts in a case of cold-blooded murder, we immediately feel moral outrage. That's a signal from our conscience that the act is wrong. We have to regard that judgment as infallible because conscience is the only moral authority we have.

When we write criminal laws to prohibit murder, they are unnecessary at best and biases at their worst because human acts happen in an almost infinite variety, moral situations are not an exception. Conscience is equipped to deal with those variations, the reasoning function of our brains cannot. It's not possible to write the perfect law on murder or any other kind of act.

The very same killing might be justifiable in several states in the USA but not in others. And, we're talking about laws that have a history of a thousand years, going back to English common law. The collective conscience of unbiased juries, after hearing all the facts, and unhindered by laws, would offer the best judgments on such cases.

The reasoning function of our brains is the wrong tool for dealing with moral judgments. In addition to criminal laws, interpretation of religious texts and self-made moral rules, also products of reasoning, often create biases.

The laws in the USA have been heavily influenced by interpretations of scripture from the Christian Bible. Many of those laws were and still are immoral. As we examine our conscience, issue by issue, we are getting rid of the immoral laws such as those that allowed slavery and those that deprived women, minorities and homosexuals of their equal rights.

Criminal laws could be replaced by a simple mission statement to establish the state's obligation to protect innocent citizens from serious harm. Conscience has taught us that it is wrong to intentionally harm or endanger an innocent person. That's enough to guide unbiased juries.

Conscience alone isn't compelling evidence that a Loving Creator exists, but once we understand its simple and powerful nature, it should create the suspicion.

Comments or questions?

joe1776,
I hate to say it, but your reasoning is untenable, when you compare facts to opines.
In the very first place, our conscience, which is called our superego, is extremely rudimentary when we are born. We all develope our conscience from learning from our parents. If the consciences of our parents were not trained by the Bible, their conscience, and ours will not be a good guide, and definitely not infallible.
Think for a moment, about the consciences of peoples in different parts of the world. Their consciences allow them to kill and even eat other human beings, and drink their blood. The Bible tells us that is wrong, being that we are supposed to love our neighbor, not eat our neighbor. So, our conscience is to be obeyed, only if trained by God's word, Proverbs 3:5-7, Hebrews 5:14. We must study the word of God, then we will have a conscience that we can trust, Proverbs 2:1-12.
Many believe that the heart will lead them right, like the conscience, but what does the Bible say about the heart, as a guide, Jeremiah 17:9, Proverbs 28:26. It is from our heart that our sayings and actions come, Matthew 15:19,20
Even if a man tries to reason on things from his own mind, he comes up against, what is called, Egocentric Predicament, he just does not have the knowledge to be able to reason on anything, and produce something better than what the Bible has always said. This is the reason that the Bible tells us to Trust in God, Jehovah with all your heart, and if you do you will find the best course to follow, Proverbs 3:5,6. Agape!!!

 

[sayak83]

Your skill in shaping historical facts to fit an agenda could land you job in Washington politics as a spin doctor.

There was no economic competition between the states in 1860 America. Cotton was only grown in the South and provided an economic benefit to the entire county before the Civil War. The North had slaves also. There were 4,000 in Washington. Slaves built the White House.

We humans are all infected with arrogance to varying degrees. We need to feel superior to others. I think that's the bias that caused slavery, religious persecution and many other crimes throughout history.

You are mistaken. Read a history book. The tension between the north and south was due to economic tensions between slave based and white free labor based economies and which model will be followed in the new states of the West. You should read about the schism between Northern and southern Democrats and how it happened (hint low class white labor force constituency) as well as which industrialist tycoons funded whom and why.

I am reading Chinese history now and unable to devote full attention to this topic. I will return to it once I collect the appropriate historical materials from the library and back up my claims with figures and data. But you should do your research as well. Read the history of that period more.

 

[joe1776]

joe1776,
I hate to say it, but your reasoning is untenable, when you compare facts to opines.

The ideas you mention that you think of as facts, I have carefully considered and rejected. For example, you think we are taught to discern right from wrong as children. This is a popular myth. It fails on logic and is currently being exposed as a false concept by science over the last 20 years.

People were once taught as children that it was okay to own slaves. If it wasn't a troubled conscience that changed their minds, what was it?

As for Christianity, I carefully considered it and rejected that also.

 

[leibowde84]

If a Loving Creator exists, and if it wanted us to have freewill along with moral guidance, we would have a simple-to-use, cross-cultural, internal moral guidance system. It's very likely that conscience is exactly that.

A bias is any preexisting belief capable of sending a judgment off its correct course. Even when we want to do the right thing morally our judgment can be thrown off course by a bias. Because of biases, the simple and powerful nature of conscience isn't obvious.

When we read the facts in a case of cold-blooded murder, we immediately feel moral outrage. That's a signal from our conscience that the act is wrong. We have to regard that judgment as infallible because conscience is the only moral authority we have.

When we write criminal laws to prohibit murder, they are unnecessary at best and biases at their worst because human acts happen in an almost infinite variety, moral situations are not an exception. Conscience is equipped to deal with those variations, the reasoning function of our brains cannot. It's not possible to write the perfect law on murder or any other kind of act.

The very same killing might be justifiable in several states in the USA but not in others. And, we're talking about laws that have a history of a thousand years, going back to English common law. The collective conscience of unbiased juries, after hearing all the facts, and unhindered by laws, would offer the best judgments on such cases.

The reasoning function of our brains is the wrong tool for dealing with moral judgments. In addition to criminal laws, interpretation of religious texts and self-made moral rules, also products of reasoning, often create biases.

The laws in the USA have been heavily influenced by interpretations of scripture from the Christian Bible. Many of those laws were and still are immoral. As we examine our conscience, issue by issue, we are getting rid of the immoral laws such as those that allowed slavery and those that deprived women, minorities and homosexuals of their equal rights.

Criminal laws could be replaced by a simple mission statement to establish the state's obligation to protect innocent citizens from serious harm. Conscience has taught us that it is wrong to intentionally harm or endanger an innocent person. That's enough to guide unbiased juries.

Conscience alone isn't compelling evidence that a Loving Creator exists, but once we understand its simple and powerful nature, it should create the suspicion.

Comments or questions?

I think conscience is a byproduct of societal evolution. Because of this, conscience does vary a bit from culture to culture. So, it doesn't seem to be as simple as how you portray it here. I don't think it is bias, because that assumes that, deep down, our conscience is all the same. That I don't see as being possible.