Two Kinds of Conscience: A Judgmental Other Self and Moral Judgment

The mention of conscience by someone quoted in my last post prompted me to look it up and think about it.

I find that people use the word “conscience” in two very different senses. Some people use the word as an abstract concept that refers to their moral judgment and feelings.

Other people use the word in a personified sense, to mean an inner, other self who gets involved when moral issues arise. They speak of the “voice” of conscience. They may “wrestle” with their conscience. Or “obey” it. Their conscience may be a “witness” or an “accuser.” For some people, it is “evil.” For others, it is “a higher or deeper self.” For Charlotte Bronte, it was a “friend”:

“If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.”

Now, there is a temptation to think that the only difference between these two uses of “conscience” is that the personifiers like to use metaphors. But that would be a mistake. It would be the same kind of mistake you would make if you thought that someone who has synesthesia was just using metaphor when he or she said that a particular number always has a particular color. They would not be using metaphor: that’s the way they really experience it.

When sane people hear a recurrent voice—such as the voice of conscience—the voice comes from another self; that is, an alternate personality, as in multiple personality, usually normal multiple personality.