[ExI] conscience

[Damien Broderick]

On 1/9/2010 4:21 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote:

> More interesting, if one is not willling to go down this way, I think
> one has ultimately to recognise that "conscience" is ultimately a
> (rather elusive) social construct, and that organic brains have not
> really much to do with it one way or another.

This is a curious lexical error that non-English writers often make in 
English, so I assume there must be only a single word in their languages 
for the two very different concepts "conscience" ("the inner sense of 
what is right or wrong in one's conduct or motives, impelling one toward 
right action") and "consciousness" ( "the state of being conscious; 
awareness of one's own existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings, 
etc."). I dimly recall that this is so in French. If so, how do you 
convey the difference in Italian, etc?

Damien Broderick