Argument from Conscience

[Angrboda]

When you call conscience an 'adaptation in its own right', you have identified a subset within the category of innate behaviors and not something distinct from innate behaviors.

As for my using the terms 'instinct', 'instinctual nature' and 'nature' interchangeably, I think my intended meaning was sufficiently clear. Please feel free to substitute the unwieldy phrase 'innate behaviors, excluding reflexes'.

When you open it up to 'innate behaviors' then that step in your argument becomes unsound. There are innate behaviors which are flexible and innate behaviors which are inflexible. That an innate behavior can be 'overruled' is no longer an adequate test as to whether conscience is an innate behavior or not. I would say one can easily make an argument that conscience is an innate behavior just like say vision is. We don't 'see' lines or forms, these are constructed by our subconscious mind so that we experience the world as composed of lines and forms. In the same way, actions that we perceive don't come to us with right or wrong attached to them, our subconscious mind constructs the categories. Regardless, now that you've opened it up to the amorphous class of "innate behaviors" it's no longer clear that a single property unites them all such that it can be struck down by showing conscience lacks that property. Reason, emotion, cognitive bias - these are all innate behaviors. I suspect that what you want to mean by innate behavior is "exactly what I intend it to mean, nothing more, nothing less." In short, it's a rubbery term you'll stretch to make fit exactly what you want it to fit.