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Asked by bluesapphire93 to Ben, James, Jen, Michael, Susanna on 14 Mar 2013.
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Jen Todd Jones answered on 14 Mar 2013:
Our conscience is very very closely tied to our minds, although one of the biggest theories I know about conscience is that it’s actually pretty automatic. When we evolved as humans from monkeys we already had a good sense of fairness and knew how to deal with disputes, scientists think that we developed a conscience as part of evolving into humans. You can see that monkeys have a sense of fairness when something is taken from them, but they seem to lack a conscience or a sense of their own actions and how they impact others. Humans have a special ability to understand their own mind and how it is separate from others and how our actions can affect them. Humans have a conscience so that we all work together happily and equally, and have done for hundreds of thousands of years – it’s something built into us, perhaps genetically.
Check out this video on monkeys’ concept of fairness, you notice the one on the left is angry (and he’s right to be!) but the one on the right is not conscientious and does not share his food.
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