Argument from Conscience

[Neo-Scholastic]

It has already been said, but Esquilax hasn’t said it so he expects us to endure the unoriginality of his opinions.

Obligated by what, exactly?

Previously answered: http://atheistforums.org/thread-35215-po...pid1012646 ; however, I will clarify below in my response to TRJF.

…if anything, their obligation is to what reason and empathy can tell us, collectively, is the best path.

This position was effectively dismissed by Premise 5.

…False dichotomy, but that isn't terribly surprising from an apologetic argument; setting up limited categories to knock down, while assuming those categories are the only possible ones is par for the course… another in a long line of apologetics that get to the end and then just blurt out "it's god!" for why it "must be," divine,…

I did no such thing. I left open the possibility of other choices here in the OP: http://atheistforums.org/thread-35215-po...pid1012572 That’s my invitation for other people to suggest alternates, since I am not committed to the argument I merely think it has some merit and deserves consideration and not casual dismissal, like you’re trying to do.

…people are not uniformly obligated to follow their consciences…

&

Humans are not obligated to follow their moral voice. I dare say that every human violates his or her own moral code at least occasionally, and even ones who don't certainly could.

How could anyone honestly believe that people need not do what they believe they should do? Someone’s ability to live according to what he sincerely believes indicates the kind of person he is. The following four-square lays out the options:

Feeling Obliged & Following Conscience = Virtuous
Feeling Obliged & Ignoring Conscience = Sinful (as in missing the mark)
Not Feeling Obliged & Following Conscience = Kind
Not Feeling Obliged & Ignoring Conscience = Indifferent (or a null set depending on your perspective)

I mean, that's ignoring the fact that the contents of an individuals conscience can vary wildly

Wrong. I already acknowledged this issue: http://atheistforums.org/thread-35215-po...pid1012674.

The above four-square presents relies on both an appropriate feeling of obligation and an adequately functioning conscience. But as I observed earlier, that may not always be the case. What about failures of conscience like scrupulosity, one the one hand, and licentiousness on the other? Or a highly developed conscience twisted by a corrupt ideology? Or what if someone has minimal or stunted conscience?

These questions do not invalidate structure of the Argument from Conscience; but rather, shows that Premise 1 (Each person is obligated to follow his or her conscience) presupposes a healthy normative human being and some theory of virtue. Any theory of virtue will do regardless of whether it is secular, like Utilitarianis & Enlightened Self-Interest, or religious in nature, like Divine Command.

Thanks for refuting your own argument, and/or engaging in blatant special pleading which undercuts this specific premise.

You mistakenly suppose that if Premise 4 applies to corporeal, mortal, and finite human beings then it must also apply to something entirely different in both kind and degree, namely an incorporeal, immortal, and infinite being. But like I said in http://atheistforums.org/thread-35215-po...pid1012762 I’m willing to settle for transcendent.

There are innate behaviors which are flexible and innate behaviors which are inflexible.

Which I mentioned in http://atheistforums.org/thread-35215-po...pid1012646

…one can easily make an argument that conscience is an innate behavior just like say vision is.

&

…[with]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.

You are following Dennett’s line of reasoning from ‘The Intentional Stance’ in which he deconstructs intentional mental properties into smaller components of more specialized function until (he believes) any semblance to what we might call subjective experience has disappeared. I find his line of reasoning absurd. The fact that a whole can be broken down into smaller parts does not negate the possibility that the whole has dispositional properties not found in the parts. For example glass has properties, like fragility, not found in silica, soda or lead oxide.

This leads into your second objection, that being: the category of ‘innate behaviors’ is so ill-defined that no one can really say if conscience falls into it or not. One the one hand, I disagree that innate behavior lacks definition. The definition is in the name, i.e. that set of behaviors that are natural to an organism. Yours is the misguided application of nominalism to something any biologist or psychologist would recognize.

On the other hand, I admit that in my haste I have not carefully distinguished between conscience as the entity that guides moral judgment, the principles that inform the conscience, the rational capacity to form value judgments, or the instinctual emotional reactions to specific environmental stimuli.

So if you want more specificity, the argument could be revamped and I will make my suggestions in response to TRJF below.

As each person grows and improves in capacity to reason, each person learns a set of norms from those around her…value judgments are learned…in part by rote, before the person has internalized what "good" or "bad" … Experiences, be they rational, instinctual, or emotional, challenge and reinforce these notions, … until a person has a complex (but internalized) moral framework…When one "feels morally obligated" to follow one's conscience, this is simply a relabeling of the process that has already occurred, one level removed: not only does the conscience decide that Action A = Good, it decides … that being good is good.

I do not disagree that something like your theory of moral development or one similar to those proposed by Jean Piaget or Kohlberg is most likely in play. The argument does not address the means by which the conscience comes into existence, merely that it does.

1) Each person has some sense of whether a certain course of action is morally correct or not, and each person feels compelled, whether morally or otherwise, to not act in a way that they believe is moral. (Barring actual psychopaths and such, I think this is true.)
2) A person's sense of right and wrong is the product of something...
3) No one is morally obligated to follow instincts, because instincts fail upon rational consideration.
4) No individual's conscience is absolute and morally binding on others.
5) Individual consciences cannot be added unless each person relies on their own conscience to feel morally obliged to the group…

You have done a fair job of repackaging the argument as I presented it. However, further up I promised to respond to your version and that may bring more clarity. (BTW I am not committed to the Argument from Conscience. I’m just throwing it out there as a way to test it and find out what I think myself about it.)


Given 1: Each person is obliged by their conscience to behave morally.

Question: What is the source of the conscience’s moral authority?

Comment on Given 1 – The argument presupposes that people have, as part of their being, something that serves as an internal guide to what is just, ethical, and praiseworthy. This something is commonly called conscience. The question is not what conscience is; but rather, why it is authoritative, in other words to whom are we obliged.

Jörmungandr disputes the premise from the perspective an eliminative materialist wherein mental properties are illusory. For those of us who do not believe they are zombies, Given 1 is not problematic. Esquilax, Redbeard and others, have repeated my earlier stated concern about the variable nature of conscience between individuals and the lack of development in others. Neither TRJF (apparently) or I see this as a flaw in the argument itself. Anyone can see that people vary with respect to many other traits like physical stature, dexterity, and intelligence. There is no reason to suppose otherwise for conscience.

Premise 2: The obligation to obey the conscience must come from either Nature, the Individual, the Collective (family, tribe, or state), or something external to the first three.

Comment on Premise 2 – Here I part company with TRJF who defines conscience as a force. This was not the original intent of the Argument from Conscience. When TRJF makes this change it veers away from the question that the argument addresses, i.e. not seeking the cause of conscience; but rather, the reason why it is morally authoritative.

Premise 3: Nature does not oblige anyone to follow their conscience, since the conscience often prompts us to overcome the non-reflexive innate behaviors provided by Nature.

Comment on Premise 3 – This one could be a problem for me but not because of the objections already offered by the argument’s skeptics. One could object on the basis of natural law, however since appealing to natural law is not acceptable to skeptics, I will not pursue that route here.

Premise 4: The individual does not have to authority to oblige themselves to follow their conscience since the individual could then back out of that obligation by his own authority. As such, self-obligation is meaningless.

Premise 5: No collective of individuals has the authority to oblige someone to follow a collective conscience unless given that authority by individuals, who have no authority to give as per Premise 4.

Comment on Premise 5 - The collective (family, tribe, state, etc.) may have the power to impose duties on individuals, but that is not the same as having the authority to do so.

Conclusion 6a: The moral authority of conscience comes from a source that transcends Nature, the individual, or the collective.

OR

Conclusion 6b: The conscience has no moral authority.

I say that if the conscience has no moral authority that presents a serious problem for anyone trying to defend their right to make any kind of moral judgement.