♣ Queen of Clubs
the moral, experiential and pragmatic family
The Argument from Conscience
St John Henry Newman
An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (A Grammar of Assent)
DemonstrativeConcludes that something exists.
- Argument form
- Disjunctive syllogism (the person before whom shame is felt is oneself, another human, or an unseen person; the first two eliminated)
- Concludes to
- Intelligent agent (an unseen person before whom shame at transgressing conscience is felt)
- Premise ground
- Empirical (shame and fear at transgression are felt only before a person — a psychological generalisation)
- Modal strength
- Actual
- What it licenses
- Period
- Nineteenth Century (1870)
- Tradition
- Augustinian (Newman)
Further reading
- Source text, public domain
An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assentessayingrammaras00newmuoft.pdf - A scholarly account
Read an exposition of the argument - A principal objection
Read the objection in full
This formulation is ours, composed from the primary source and compressed to fit the card; the argument admits of other statements. Objections have been made to every argument in the deck; where one is linked above, it is chosen by us, not written by us.
ergocards.com/conscience
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