Argument from Conscience

[Esquilax]

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

I've already read ahead and seen the bits you've deleted from my post. If what I'm saying is unoriginal, then that's due to a combination of your own regurgitated talking points, and the dishonest censorship of my response you've done before you deigned to answer it.

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

I read your answer. I just don't think it actually answers the question, nor demonstrates what you're saying. I know completely baseless fiat assertions are your bread and butter, but at least try to demonstrate the mechanism behind your rambling once in a while. Don't just point back at another set of fiat assertions and act like that provides any meaningful response.

This position was effectively dismissed by Premise 5.

Again, you resort to referring to another fiat assertion to cover for the first one. Not convinced.

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.

No, I get it, you're looking for responses to an argument without the argument necessarily being your own. What I'm saying is that one of the problems with the argument- because I'm pointing out the issues I have with it and not casually dismissing it, as you baselessly accuse- is that it does what a lot of apologetic arguments do, which is setting a list of criteria without demonstrating that they're the only available ones, and then knocking those down. My point is that if there are additional criteria, which there are (some combination of them being the most obvious one), then the argument cannot be said to be comprehensive, and is thus invalid, and also that a negative argument, that only reduces possibilities from a prepared list, cannot add up to positive proof of a position.

You ask for responses to the damn argument and then ignore them all to say I'm just dismissing it when I give them.

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.

Do I seriously need to point out to you that people can be mistaken in what they believe they should do, and that those mistakes can often be very costly to other people? I mean, I pointed out that very thing, with examples, in the portion of my post that you simply deleted because you, evidently, had no answer for it, but hey. This was all in service of demonstrating that, morally speaking, one is not "obligated" to follow their consciences and in some cases the exact opposite is true. Like, let's take your four options below:

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)

The first two are not uniformly correct, meaning that there are additional options not present. As I said before, there were people in the past who felt obligated to follow their consciences by "uplifting" Aboriginal children of sufficiently white racial makeup by kidnapping them and abusing them until they acted like little English children. They genuinely thought that this was morally best, but in that case the end result was someone following their conscience with a directly immoral result. By corollary, this means that we also have examples wherein one could feel obligated to their conscience, not follow it, and indeed actively fight against it, and achieve a virtuous result.

The conscience is not some monolithic bloc thing that we all have, it is a variable informed by external stimuli; the contents of it will not be the same for everyone. The assertion that one is obligated to follow their conscience, given this, is untrue; dotted throughout human history are myriad examples of people achieving moral good by ignoring the intuitions of their conscience and following the evidence instead. If it is an obligation, by some strange definitional game that you might want to play instead of conceding a point, then it isn't one you necessarily should follow; your conscience should constantly be checked and re-verified by available evidence, and an obligation that is subordinate and conditional like that can hardly be said to be an obligation at all.

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.

Which makes the conscience itself completely irrelevant, since the argument is predicated on it working in a certain way, toward a certain pre-existing definition of good. So what you're really saying is that people are obligated to do good; you can cut the conscience right out of the equation if you'll only accept consciences that obligate toward good outcomes as legitimate ones. You're essentially saying "you are obligated to follow the dictates of your conscience, except in those cases in which you aren't because those dictates do not match the criteria for dictates one should be obligated to," which is the same as saying nothing at all, and draping a framework over it. It's circular.

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.

So then you agree with me that not all people are obligated to follow their conscience. Since you have some idea of what it is, within the conscience, that is conducive toward a conscience worth following, wouldn't it be more accurate to say that people are obligated to follow those qualities, rather than the conscience that may or may not have them?

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.

So it's special pleading, then?