Conscience & Moral Truth

By Aaron Kreinbrook

"Conscience & Moral Truth" is an introspective dialogue which identifies the nature of the human conscience as it relates to moral truth. This book proposes epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical ideas that are largely consistent with the basic tenets of Christianity. Dive into questions of morality and ethical debate through conversational exchange. Go step by step into the components that make up the topics of "Conscience" and "Moral Truth" in a clear and concise breakdown.

The content herein, presented through a conversation between two fictitious characters, serves as a reflection of the author's conscious thought process regarding the themes under consideration. Though consistent with Christianity, this book provides a unique and in-depth analysis of the aforementioned ideas by means of philosophical reasoning and natural theology.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667823683

Aaron Kreinbrook

Aaron Kreinbrook is an artist proficient with various media who has a concern for understanding, organizing, and presenting the beauty of truth. Aaron's pursuit of truth through artistic representation is meant not only as a means to an end, but also as an end in itself. The art which Aaron produces is always intended for his personal development and enjoyment along with that of anyone receptive to his work.

Book preview

cover.jpg

© 2022 Aaron Kreinbrook

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

ISBN: 978-1-66782-367-6 (Softcover)

ISBN: 978-1-66782-368-3 (eBook)

Table of Contents

Introduction

Conscience

A. Moral Awareness

B. Consciousness

C. Common Experience

D. Operative Aspects

Moral Truth

A. Value Judgements

B. Pleasure & Pain

1. Necessity

2. Purpose

3. Relationship

4. Trade-Off

5. Interdependence

6. Recurrence

7. Spontaneity

8. Automatism

9. Degrees

10. Kinds

a. Psychological

b. Physical

C. Subjectivity & Objectivity

D. Objective Values

Introduction

Conscience is an essential and inescapable aspect of what it means to be human. It is the intrinsic moral compass that is shared to some extent by all human beings which points the way to what is understood to be good and right action. Every personal experience with conscience presents one with the burden of choice to do what is good and right according to conscience, or to do otherwise. That which is determined to be good and right by means of conscience, which is implicit of what is bad and wrong, with respect to human behavior, may be counted as moral truth. This book is a self-contained and self-reflective work of the author which aims at establishing the nature of conscience in relation to moral truth.

The content of this work is presented through a dialogue between two fictitious characters that are identified as ‘Teacher’ and ‘Student’. Each character is defined only through the meaning of their name and the dynamic of the dialogue. This use of generic characters in dialogue is a literary device which projects the author’s conscious thought progression about the subject matter in a manner that not only excludes extraneous contextual information, but also excludes the explicit presentation of the author as a participant in the content, as would be expressed in a first-person format. The deliberate minimalization of the author’s presence in the text, as well as the minimalization of character and setting, allows the author and the reader to concentrate more fully and directly on the subject matter without interference from self-references by the author or other distracting contextual details.

The assertions and conclusions that occur within the presentation of the author’s inner dialogue on the subject matter of this book are authoritative and dogmatic, which is presumably consistent with the nature of any other person’s inner dialogue regarding any subject matter. Since this work does not directly engage with the perspectives of the reader, it may be perceived as a challenge or affront to the latter. While the author is convinced of the truth of what is articulated herein, the reader is invited to question the validity of every definitive statement that is presented to them relative to their experience and understanding.

I.

Conscience

A. Moral Awareness

Student: What is your understanding of that which is commonly referred to as ‘conscience’?

Teacher: "Basically, the term ‘conscience’ signifies something both within and beyond a person’s psyche that is associated with the person’s moral awareness about their conduct and the conduct of others."

Student: How do you define ‘moral awareness’?

Teacher: "Moral awareness is a degree of consciousness that involves the prioritization of value judgements concerning human behavior. Value judgements of human behavior may be expressed with terms such as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, which are justified by implication with terms such as ‘good’ and ‘bad’, respectively. One may have moral awareness about oneself that is directly associated with one’s conscience, or one may have moral awareness about someone other than oneself that is indirectly associated with one’s conscience; a person cannot have moral awareness about themselves that is indirectly associated with their conscience, and, conversely, a person cannot have moral awareness regarding someone other than themselves that is directly associated with their conscience."

Student: What do you mean when you refer to moral awareness that is ‘directly’ and ‘indirectly’ associated with conscience?

Teacher: "When a person’s moral awareness is concerned with themselves, their moral awareness is directly associated with their conscience because it is self-evident understanding that arises from within and beyond themselves. When a person’s moral awareness is concerned with that which is other than themselves, their moral awareness is indirectly associated with their conscience because it is established by means of their moral awareness that is directly associated with their conscience as a standard of comparison."

Student: Am I correct in assuming that conscience and moral awareness are unique to human beings?

Teacher: "Yes. Conscience and moral awareness are unique to the essence of human beings as they stem from the unique human capacity for conscious and holistic self-reflection, which is facilitated through what I call the ‘intrinsic perspective’ of human understanding. A person cannot have an awareness of what is right and wrong, or good and bad, in relation to their conduct and that of other people, without first having the ability to consciously and holistically consider themselves.

Non-human living things are unique from non-living things, and similar to humans, in that they are capable of some level of perception. Unlike humans, non-human living things do not appear to be capable of thinking about themselves consciously and holistically, although it seems that non-human living things have some measure of unconscious self-awareness when they interact with that which is other than themselves. The outward orientation of the perception of non-human living things, which I refer to as the ‘extrinsic perspective’, is, to some extent, held in common with all human beings, while non-human living things lack the capacity to consciously occupy the intrinsic perspective that is unique to human understanding and experience.

If non-human living things are not capable of conscious and holistic self-reflection, then they must also lack any conscious connection to conscience with associated moral awareness concerning themselves and their behavior. Without the ability to self-reflect, and without any conscious connection to conscience with associated moral awareness concerning themselves and their behavior, non-human living things are also rendered incapable of having moral awareness about the behavior of anything other than themselves, since they have no standard of comparison through moral awareness that is directly associated with conscience.

Moreover, moral awareness that is directly or indirectly associated with conscience cannot occur within a vacuum, but rather it is related, with some degree of consciousness, to oneself and that which is other than oneself. As a perceiver is logically implied when there is an awareness of something in particular, so the awareness of oneself as a perceiver logically implies the existence of that which is other than oneself. Given the human ability of self-reflection that allows for conscience and associated moral awareness as well as the apparent lack of this ability for self-reflection in non-human things, a person’s moral awareness about that which is other than themselves, that is indirectly associated with their conscience, is applicable and reasonable only when it is with respect to other human beings. Therefore, moral awareness that is directly or indirectly associated with conscience is properly embedded in a particular human milieu."

B. Consciousness

Student: How do you define the term ‘consciousness’, and what do you mean when you say that moral awareness, in association with conscience, is a ‘degree of consciousness’?

Teacher: "The term ‘consciousness’ may be defined as a cognitive state of being awake, with what I call ‘passive understanding’ and ‘active understanding’ concerning anything in particular, that, in essence, possesses, and is possessed by, every living thing and that to which these extend. The ‘degree of consciousness’ that I mentioned indicates the extent to which a person, or any other living thing, is awake with passive and active understanding about something in particular. Thus, to be awake with passive and active understanding as regards morality, viz., to have moral awareness, is to have a relative amount of moral cognitive presence.

The ‘passive understanding’ involved with consciousness is simply an awareness of the unqualified existence of something in particular as an objective ‘this’, so to speak. The ‘active understanding’ involved with consciousness consists of a rational relationship between two or more particular things that have been identified with an unqualified existence through passive understanding. Passive and active understanding are present in all living things to varying extents.

Consciousness, as I have defined it, appears to be of the essence of