(April 20, 2017 at 2:34 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:(April 20, 2017 at 2:13 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: Conscience, since the question is so general.
I was intentionally vague since there are various types of authority - moral, expert, civil, etc. At the same time, there is a case to be made that expert and civil authority are in some sense derivative. When should someone defer to expert opinion? Why (or perhaps when) should people respect their civil authorities. As for following one's conscience, how does someone justify privileging his own conscience over the consciences of others? For example, we never say to another person, "You shouldn't do that because it violates my conscience." Instead, we tell others they are wrong by appealing to some shared higher authority - the law, reason, consensus opinion, holy writ, common decency, etc.
Is there such a thing as an expert opinion on moral facts - a respected thinker or group of people, like elders, on whom others should trust over their own personal feelings? And if there are, why should we trust them, if not because of our own judgement that they are reliable. A bit of a dilemma that one.
As an additional wrinkle, I would point out that there is a difference between knowing of a thing and knowing about it (in other words that something is versus what something is.) People can agree that there are moral facts without agreeing on how to determine what they are.
Any authority I decide to abide will only get my compliance so long as it doesn't violate my moral sensibilities. Once it does, it loses its authority.
