Where I stand on doctrine of conscience

The following paper finds a gap in the ‘science’, then has some handy theology (another outcome and its derivatives of the worlding urge) to through in the gap science has discovered. Seemingly unaware of the whole god of the gaps.

Do Humans Have a Reliable Conscience? Matthew Braddock

From the abstract at philpapers.org:

Now my question is this: can we explain the reliability of our conscience theologically, in a way that accommodates the scientific findings of moral diversity and the role of culture? Can theology’s doctrine of conscience succeed where secular moral philosophy has failed? That is my puzzle, which I explore in this paper.

Well to be fair, not a deus ex machina, not quite a god's messenger a'leaping out of a gap between the clouds, but a doctrine, i.e. a double-down belief as a methodology of semi-conscious worlding, which leaps out from our huddled foreheads comes conscience to clear up the befuddlement with reason's intuitions, or intuitions reasons, or something.

As such, the paper at least examples that anyone can be a gap-hunter, although most use a gap as an excuse to indulge their own preferences. Preferences which, at a compositional base, are an unavoidable part of being alive in body and landscape, in self and world, in being uniquely ordinary.

The scientific literature tells us that cultural processes largely determine the specific content of our moral norms and intuitions. But this raises a problem. Cultural processes seem highly contingent: they can easily lead humans to all sorts of moral intuitions, including nasty ones. So why should we trust our culturally shaped conscience? Elsewhere I have argued that secular “moral objectivists” or “moral realists” have no good explanation (Braddock 2016; 2021).

So far so good, and to the point, to point at the gap.

 Pyrrhonists point at this point and say we should not act rashly and that we might be wise to suspend judgement, ataraxia may follow. Unfortunately these are theologians, and they know no fear.

However, our discussion suggests that theology’s doctrine of conscience can accommodate these findings. The doctrine coheres with the empirical literature. It also explains the reliability of our moral intuitions and thus succeeds where secular moral philosophy has failed. For these reasons, it deserves more attention.

This coherence arises in debate on data on moral convergence across various societies. Here a claim-jumping preference is then outlined which grabs the moral convergence evidence as supporting theological doctrines on conscience.

This position is only attractive if one forgets the moral convergence may be the result of evolution history, and/or similar historical environments/conditions. And not revelation and godly interference, nor evolutionary socialised processes which make up all that stuff, all those outcomes like morality/religion/art/ (broad practices) and their derivatives like conscience/devotion/loyalty (encoded over-ordered    (See also Position on moral realism for the other side of this coin.)

Nice try, I guess. I mean if the empiric is empirical, i.e. the evidence being what it is, it may well mean that a doctrine of conscience is not required at all, rather than a good fit between conscience and the science. (I have nearly avoided the pun).

Conscience disappears, a bit like the moral domain itself (prefiguring Saturday's post).