syncategorematic See LOGICAL FORM, SYNCATE -. GOREMAT. synderesis, in medieval moral theology, conscience. St. Jerome used the term, and it became a fixture because of Peter Lombard’s inclusion of it in his Sentences. Despite this origin, ‘synderesis’ is distinguished from ‘conscience’ by Aquinas, for whom synderesis is the quasi-habitual grasp of the most common principles of the moral order (i.e., natural law), whereas conscience is the application of such knowledge to fleeting and unrepeatable circumstances. ‘Conscience’ is ambiguous in the way in which ‘knowledge’ is: knowledge can be the mental state of the knower or what the knower knows. But ‘conscience’, like ‘synderesis’, is typically used for the mental state. Sometimes, however, conscience is taken to include general moral knowledge as well as its application here and now; but the content of synderesis is the most general precepts, whereas the content of conscience, if general knowledge, will be less general precepts. Since conscience can be erroneous, the question arises as to whether synderesis and its object, natural law precepts, can be obscured and forgotten because of bad behavior or upbringing. Aquinas held that while great attrition can take place, such common moral knowledge cannot be wholly expunged from the human mind. This is a version of the Aristotelian doctrine that there are starting points of knowledge so easily grasped that the grasping of them is a defining mark of the human being. However perversely the human agent behaves there will remain not only the comprehensive realization that good is to be done and evil avoided, but also the recognition of some substantive human goods. See also AQUINAS, ARISTOTLE , ETHICS. R.M.