About Conscience

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

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.

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

Neither the variable nature of conscience between individuals nor the lack of development in others would be 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.

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

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 the individual consents to that authority, 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.

One of two possible conclusions may be drawn from the above...

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.

  

Starting with some innate kernel of conscience, like empathy, people build their conscience with reason applied to experience. Their reasoning may be flawed and their experiences desensitizing. The fact is that each person must decide for themselves what is right and what is wrong. For this reason, I call the following of conscience uniformly virtuous, not because the end results are good; but rather, because when people following their conscience they cultivate the virtues that make people better exemplars of what it means to be human, e.g. more courageous, more rational, greater temperance, just, etc. I say that it is your conscience tells you that it is right and proper to do so, because that is what a healthy and fully functioning conscience does. It tells you what you should do even with respect to itself.