Conscience isn’t as reliable a guide on moral questions as it’s often made out to be. Consider Thomas Jefferson’s advice to his impressionable 11-year-old daughter, Martha:
If ever you are about to say anything amiss or to do anything wrong, consider beforehand. You will feel something within you which will tell you it is wrong and ought not to be said or done: this is your conscience, and be sure to obey it. Our Maker has given us all this faithful internal monitor, and if you always obey it, you will always be prepared for the end of the world, or for a much more certain event, which is death.
Yet despite publicly opposing slavery, Jefferson conveniently owned enslaved people to support his lavish lifestyle and even fathered children with an enslaved woman.
This stark contradiction highlights a critical truth: even a informed and discerning conscience does not guarantee consistently virtuous action, particularly when self-interest is at stake.
And that’s the great paradox of conscience—the inherent tension between the powerful, felt imperative to obey one’s inner moral sense and its demonstrated fallibility and subjectivity and inconsistency.
Moral consistency is a myth.
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The critical mind 
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