Argument from Conscience

[Angrboda]

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

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…[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.

No, I'm pointing out that there may be innate behaviors which have the same dispositional properties as conscience which we do not assign to the category of transcendant, depending on what you include in innate behaviors.

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.

Not in the least.  My point was that the grab bag of innate behaviors is so varied that they cannot all be excluded under a clause that unites them by a single property.

The main problem with your argument is assuming that conscience, if it belongs to the class of natural behaviors will share at least one property with these other natural behaviors beyond them simply being natural behaviors.  ("3) No one is morally obligated to follow instinct since instincts easily fail upon rational consideration.")  This assumes that all innate behaviors share that trait.  But what if conscience is the one innate behavior that doesn't share that property?  You've provided no means for ruling out that possibility.  As I asked originally, what if conscience is an adaptation in its own right, unique among our range of innate behaviors?  If so, then #3 becomes a non sequitur.  All you've said is that conscience is not like these other innate behaviors.  Well, so what?

I also am unclear on what you mean by "fail upon rational consideration" with respect to innate behavior.  The Trolley problem could be considered an example where conscience fails under rational consideration, depending on your meaning.

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A couple other formulations of the argument, FWIW:

http://www.strangenotions.com/god-exists/#15

http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?t...conscience
("Psychological explanations ... Alternatively, conscience arises from the sub-conscious and we confabulate a moral justification. That accounts for the negative feelings for ignoring the conscience. To account for conscience by claiming "God did it" because there is "no other explanation" but without considering the subconscious is an argument from ignorance.")