The True Definition and Nature of Human Conscience

One thing that makes humans unique is that we have this ability or trait that we're all apparently born with called a "conscience". The term conscience is closely related to the concepts of free-will, the self, the mind, or the spirit/soul. An example of this is the term "consciousness", which we use as a noun for our natural human ability to percieve and project emotion, thought, and action.

The terms conscience and conscious essentially mean the same thing. In fact, conscious is given as a synonym for conscious and vice versa on many online dictionaries. The definition of conscience according to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary is as follows:

www.merriam-webster.com...
1 a: the sense or consciousness of the moral goodness or blameworthiness of one's own conduct, intentions, or character together with a feeling of obligation to do right or be good b: a faculty, power, or principle enjoining good acts c: the part of the superego in psychoanalysis that transmits commands and admonitions to the ego

Now the definition from the same dictionary for conscious is as follows:

www.merriam-webster.com...
1: perceiving, apprehending, or noticing with a degree of controlled thought or observation 2 archaic: sharing another's knowledge or awareness of an inward state or outward fact 3: personally felt 4: capable of or marked by thought, will, design, or perception

Clearly here we see that these words are indeeds synonyms and interchangable in just about every sentence you could come up with. Heck, most people can't even get the spelling right on either and end up with a combination of both in 1 bastardized word. So what am I getting on about?

The term "con" has a meaning and definition all of its' own. When used as a prefix, which is how it was used to form the single word "conscience", it adds meaning to the rest of the word. "Con" when used as a noun has the following definition from the same dictionary:

www.merriam-webster.com...
1 : an argument or evidence in opposition 2 : the negative position or one holding it

When used as an adverb, it gives us this following definition:

www.merriam-webster.com...
: on the negative side : in opposition

So clearly we see what "con" means, regardless of how it is used the meaning is always very similar. So what I am getting out of the word "conscience" here is to be against or in opposition to science. Don't go getting ahead of yourself, that doesn't mean in opposition to science as an opinion, but rather, as the very nature of the conscience itself. The conscience cannot be adeqeuetly explained purely through science; you cannot explain the conscience of an individual in the same way as the person's eyesight or hearing. Clearly with a sense, you can pinpoint the precise part of the brain which the sense interacts with and comes from essentially, how it works, why it works, and also that it can be damaged or 100% destroyed.. that is the sense itself. Think of it as losing your hearing or your eyesight. Now, in the case of the human conscience, it is different than these because it cannot be damaged or lost in the same manner as a sense, only upon death is the conscience truly lost. One could argue that Alzheimer's disease may rob a person of their conscience, but I disagree, and this just like anything else regarding the nature of the human conscience(beyond some very basic things) cannot be sufficiently explained via science. While obviously, something like your senses can be explained in minute detail.

So then, it is my opinion that the human conscience which makes us unique as human beings when compared to other mammals on Earth, which to many people is synonymous to the human spirit/soul and/or having free-will as a human being, has in its' very foundation as an Anglo-Saxon / Latin word structure the expression that it is above and beyond the explainable sciences. That it is in outright opposition to science in nature because science cannot explain it sufficiently, according to science it should not exist. I should say instead that there isn't a reason, theory or explainable, of why it is there, how it got there, and what exactly it is that is tangible in the physical realm.

Go deep into your own personal conscience and think to yourself, "Why am I the only animal on this planet with such an unexplainable gift? What is this that contains my thoughts?" at which point you'll realize what I have realized, that it is not simply your skull that contains your thoughts, your conscience. It is some intangible, non-physical, unexplainable by science, but it is there without a doubt and we all know it 100% to be true. Truly it is a con to science.

I feel that the human conscience is a proverbial diving board; once you come to the realization that something can indeed exist without a doubt, provable to you through your very own ability to think and reason, which is intangible to the physical realm(in other words currently beyond the explainations of science), you begin to see that things can and do exist beyond the scrutiny of science. This opens a massive door to the unknown and to the taboo; many of the things discussed on this very website. It doesn't mean everything unexplainable is actually 'foreign' and real, but that it has the real possibility to be so. This can be applied to religious beliefs and the notion of the One God, creator of the universe. It also means(in my opinion) that a conscience had to exist in some form, some way, to initiate the process of creation.

Your conscience thoughts?

reply to post by runetang


Go to youtube and watch the video interviews with Dr John Hagelin. He will scientifically explain what the conscious is and how it works as well as our place as humans in the infinite world.

Interesting stuff.

Not all humans have a concience:

(for some reason it wouldn't link this corectly)
w w w.c a s s i o p a e a.c o m/cassiopaea/psychopath3.htm


"What is very disturbing about psychopaths, besides their sense of special entitlement, is the complete lack of empathy for normal people, for "antisocials (psychopaths) seem to lack a conscience, feeling little or no empathy for the people whose lives they touch...the antisocial effortlessly resists all regulation, unable to see beyond his self-interest or to adopt standards of right versus wrong." [Black, XIII]."



[edit on 17-7-2008 by Zul007]

[edit on 17-7-2008 by Zul007]

[edit on 17-7-2008 by Zul007]

[edit on 17-7-2008 by Zul007]

If you have a chance to listen to Journey of Souls, available in mp3 format or in book form, in there a PhD used hypnosis to reach the superconscious of people. That is what it is called in some scientific journals.

What the conscience is, is subconscious prompting by the conscious computer which is running the software for your sentience, and based on your archetype, and knowing your archetypal behavior patterns, it gives you a sense of right and wrong.

The problem with the 4% sociopaths is that originally when humans were being engineered, they mated with animals. Jaguars in South America, the Olmecs, and with monkeys in Africa, (Rama's monkey men) and so the conscious computer, which would normally provide their conscience, it cannot properly interface with some people, because it does not know the archetype, because the archetypal behaviors are mixed with animal instinctual behavior patterns.

What we ended up with are more aggressive survivors and more aggressive breeders than the Neanderthal, but a 4% sociopath population that spoils things for everyone else. Hence the need for so much of a police state.

But software was written to compensate for that, and sentient helper applications are used by the conscious computer and that is the superconscious.
Otherwise known as angels.

And if you are wondering well how then does that work, if an Olmec mates with a jaguar and a child is born, that is a monstrosity, would it not just die and how does that enter the race of man. well as long as the child lives, it now has a sentience record, based on its parents archetypes, and so when it reincarnates, it keeps the same sentience record, and keeps the same archetypal behaviors, even though when it reincarnates, it reincarnates into a proper human body.





[edit on 17-7-2008 by Osiris555]

While I don't agree that humans mated with Jaguars and Monkeys, I do think that there are humans that do not have what we'd consider the traditional conscience. However, this does not mean they have no conscience whatsoever, just that it is vastly different from a normal one, and because of this, they exhibit antisocial behaviors we find to be unusual and of that archetype of person.

So I failed to address sociopaths/psychopaths, but I feel that even they have some form of demented, strange, and twisted conscience. If they literally had no conscience whatsoever, they'd have no ability to reason at all; it goes well beyond knowing right from wrong and having remorse and emotions for others. The conscience is there every waking moment, thats why they say you are conscience or unconscious, or going in and out of consciousness from an injury such as trauma to the brain. The only time you are not within your own personal conscience, or the only time your conscience is not active, is when you are asleep. Asleep, knocked out, or dead.. thats all there is to it. There are no other states of being which exist for us where the conscience is present, or not present.

So even a deranged psychopath has a conscience, for if he didn't, he wouldn't be conscience, because he must be within his conscience to be awake and active in the world, to be alive. With no conscience you're unconcious, which can often be the pre-cursor state to death itself, depending on how you became unconcious to begin with.