I think one has to understand the construction of conscience in the same way as one understands the construction of race.
There is no race of one; your individual feelings of conscience do not comprise the totality of the racial conscience. You are a cell in the body. Anyone's individual conscience may lead them in one direction or another, just as any feature, it may be well-formed or malformed. But it is only that which is reproduced in the race that matters. Nature rewards a collective conscience which is formed in accordance with it; it punishes a sense of conscience formed in opposition to it.
We see this already in liberalism and in queerness. Those whose individual consciences allow for abortion, elevate hedonism, or devalue heterosexual norms find their own birth rates plummeting. The conscience of a liberal does not last.
"Our tradition commands us to obey the voice of conscience, which is to say, the tradition commands us to overrule it—a flat contradiction. "
I would argue that there is no tradition requiring us to obey our conscience, especially opposed to that of the legitimate commands of authorities. The hard problem is solved by slashing through the gordion knot and just making a terrible decision to the modern mind.
Nothing you think or feel matters, only what is commanded matters.
I think one has to understand the construction of conscience in the same way as one understands the construction of race.
There is no race of one; your individual feelings of conscience do not comprise the totality of the racial conscience. You are a cell in the body. Anyone's individual conscience may lead them in one direction or another, just as any feature, it may be well-formed or malformed. But it is only that which is reproduced in the race that matters. Nature rewards a collective conscience which is formed in accordance with it; it punishes a sense of conscience formed in opposition to it.
We see this already in liberalism and in queerness. Those whose individual consciences allow for abortion, elevate hedonism, or devalue heterosexual norms find their own birth rates plummeting. The conscience of a liberal does not last.
"Our tradition commands us to obey the voice of conscience, which is to say, the tradition commands us to overrule it—a flat contradiction. "
I would argue that there is no tradition requiring us to obey our conscience, especially opposed to that of the legitimate commands of authorities. The hard problem is solved by slashing through the gordion knot and just making a terrible decision to the modern mind.
Nothing you think or feel matters, only what is commanded matters.
Right, the "tradition" in question is liberalism (and, more broadly, axiality). An anti-traditional tradition, and therefore able to be exploded.