tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2696956101824934089.post6916591508227824956..comments2024-03-12T16:53:52.795-04:00Comments on Crypto-Catholic Libertine: The Jesuits vindicatedJules Aiméhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08262535377454858987noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2696956101824934089.post-25351159844005277512012-04-02T18:38:27.223-04:002012-04-02T18:38:27.223-04:00I didn't get the response. Perhaps something w...I didn't get the response. Perhaps something went wrong with Blogger? I'm sorry I missed the chance to read it. Do you remember what you said well enough to try again?<br /><br />JAJules Aiméhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08262535377454858987noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2696956101824934089.post-77525763912779078132012-04-02T18:25:39.133-04:002012-04-02T18:25:39.133-04:00Jules, you did not publish my response to your rep...Jules, you did not publish my response to your reply.Ron Krumposhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05371279514024960026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2696956101824934089.post-43350916349174175142012-03-29T11:44:10.698-04:002012-03-29T11:44:10.698-04:00Thanks for commenting. You're opening quite a ...Thanks for commenting. You're opening quite a few doors here. <br /><br />1. A lot hangs on what we mean by "internalized". Conscience means more than habits which can also be the result internalizing moral principles. At the very least, conscience has to be something given; it has to be a sort of voice within us and "internalized" is not sufficient for that.<br /><br />2. Internalized moral principles are not necessarily a good thing. If Joe has learned to hate some visible minority he has internalized moral principles. They are bad moral principles but they remain moral principles.<br /><br />3. There are, no doubt, religions that say that conscience is the "inner warning voice of God" but most are considerably more sophisticated about it than that. The Catholic view, for example, is that we are given a conscience but we are also required to form it.<br /><br />4. Socrates's Daemon only gave negative notices but even these are subtle. For example, the Daemon stops him from leaving Phaedrus after their debate about love but it does not tell Socrates exactly what to do—all it says is that this isn't good enough, you can't leave until you do better.<br /><br />It seems to me that Socrates was onto something very important here. An absolute duty to obey your conscience need not mean that it tells us what to do in particular situations. My conscience may tell me to re-examine a choice but that does not preclude the possibility that I might decide the original choice is still the correct one. (Just because I feel guilty does not mean that I am guilty and neither am I innocent simply because I feel no guilt. My conscience does me a huge favour by urging me to examine myself more closely regardless of what I conclude as a result of that examination.)<br /><br />5. Finally, it's important to grasp that Freud turns the process upside down. Traditional morality always maintained that our urges and desires needed to be brought in line with moral training. If there was a problem maintaining moral integrity it was always with the desires. Freud argues that it is the super ego that occasionally needs to be fixed to maintain unity. That is a complete subversion of both classical and religious morality.<br /><br />I'd add that Freud is now rightly dismissed as pseudo science.Jules Aiméhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08262535377454858987noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2696956101824934089.post-26656880560294645282012-03-28T16:37:08.530-04:002012-03-28T16:37:08.530-04:00Jonathan Haidt's new book is so broad in its s...Jonathan Haidt's new book is so broad in its scope that I can only comment on one aspect: the relationship between conscience and morality. He says that political (secular) and religious views of morality frequently divide people. Many of us may have both in intuitive and learned behavior. In my free ebook on comparative mysticism, <i>"the greatest achievement in life,"</i> is a chapter called "Duel of the dual." Here are four paragraphs from it:<br /><br /> The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology defines <b>conscience</b> as <i>“a reasonably coherent set of internalized moral principals that provides evaluations of right and wrong with regard to acts either performed or contemplated. Historically, theistic views aligned conscience with the voice of God and hence regarded it as innate. The contemporary view is that the prohibitions and obligations of conscience are learned."</i> <br /><br /> The Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion lists some interesting historical observations on the word. Socrates said that conscience was the inner warning voice of God. Among Stoics it was a divine spark in man. Throughout the Middle Ages, conscience, <i>synderesis</i> in Greek, was universally binding rules of conduct. Religious interpretations later changed in psychiatry.<br /><br /> Sigmund Freud had coined a new term for conscience; he called it “superego.” This was self-imposed standards of behavior we learned from parents and our community, rather than from a divine source. People who transgressed those rules felt guilt. Carl Jung, Freud’s famous contemporary, said that conscience was an archetype of a “collective unconscious”; content from society is learned later. Most religions still view conscience as the foundation of morality.<br /><br /> Perhaps conscience can be viewed as a double-pane window, with the self in between. On one side, it looks toward ego and free will to obey community’s laws. On the other side, it is toward the soul and divine will to follow universal law. They often converge to dictate the same, or a similar, course of conduct…and sometimes not. The moral dilemma is when these two views conflict.Ron Krumposhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05371279514024960026noreply@blogger.com