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Anomalocaris · (This post was last modified: June 2, 2022 at 3:11 pm by Anomalocaris.)

What does “evolution depends on” mean in context?

Angrboda · June 2, 2022 at 3:14 pm

Meaning that instinctual responses to selective pressures are more likely to succeed than those which require intervention by the animal's agency or initiative.

**The Grand Nudger** · (This post was last modified: June 2, 2022 at 3:20 pm by The Grand Nudger.)

Well, maybe not, as accomplishing moral goals may not be equivalent to survival.

Consider a stand-and-die order.

Idk that it’s a conundrum that our agency isn’t required to accomplish moral goals… but that probably has something to do with my being a natural realist willing to wave away such questions as somehow woven into the fabric of reality itself. I think that the moral goals were always there to anything that could observe or effect them by any means.

In sum…I think our specific agency ( whatever that is) makes us -better- at it, is all. Better not in the sense that we succeed more often…but better, at least, in that we realize when we fail.

Anomalocaris · (This post was last modified: June 2, 2022 at 3:20 pm by Anomalocaris.)

(June 2, 2022 at 3:14 pm)Angrboda Wrote: Meaning that instinctual responses to selective pressures are more likely to succeed than those which require intervention by the animal's agency or initiative.

Is there a clear boundary between instinctual response and behavior in which we might see agency or initiative?

**The Grand Nudger** · (This post was last modified: June 2, 2022 at 3:26 pm by The Grand Nudger.)

Nope. Rightly or wrongly. Behavior is what is. The last word in any item of (alleged) moral import- to a realist. Anything beyond that - we’re shooting the shit between friends.

I think I’m a more competent moral agent than rapeseed. This may not be the case in mere reality…if only because rapeseed can’t electively fail.

Anomalocaris · (This post was last modified: June 2, 2022 at 3:34 pm by Anomalocaris.)

So what we call intellect and initiative can be seen as just very complex instincts that responds to many inputs, including past experience, current sensory inputs, chemical state of balance, and result coming from the running of predictive internal mental models of self, associates, and interactable environs.

**The Grand Nudger** · (This post was last modified: June 2, 2022 at 3:33 pm by The Grand Nudger.)

As before, what we call those things may not be a complicated version of x. It may be that below some level of complexity there is no x.

That below that level there is y.

That below that level ir outside of those circumstances or without that crucial attribute…no matter how complex…it’s y, and not x.

Moral agency isn’t a hard place to draw that line in principle. We draw it in practice. There’s a difference between thing that do bad z in ignorance or without volition, and things that do. Knowledge….and volition.

Plants may not know shit. Doesn’t prevent them from behaving intelligently, but it dies prevent them from begaving as moral agents.

Angrboda · June 2, 2022 at 3:31 pm

It's turtles all the way down!

- The Turtle Mereologist

Anomalocaris · June 2, 2022 at 3:35 pm

(June 2, 2022 at 3:28 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: As before, what we call those things may not be a complicated version of x. It may be that below some level of complexity there is no x.

That below that level there is y.

That below that level ir outside of those circumstances or without that crucial attribute…no matter how complex…it’s y, and not x.

Moral agency isn’t a hard place to draw that line in principle. We draw it in practice. There’s a difference between thing that do bad z in ignorance or without volition, and things that do. Knowledge….and volition.

Plants may not know shit. Doesn’t prevent them from behaving intelligently, but it dies prevent them from begaving as moral agents.

It seems to me the only feature that arguably is not required for what we colloquially call instinct, as might be found in a flat worm, but which is required for what we might call intellect and initiative, is the ability to act based on predictions of outcome under circumstances that is a much looser analogue of some past experience.

**The Grand Nudger** · (This post was last modified: June 2, 2022 at 4:11 pm by The Grand Nudger.)

And yet there are creatures with both instinct and initiative that we do not take to be moral agents.

Moral agency, as we describe and understand it - is a high bar. Maybe limited just to us and things like us. That’s assuming that there are potential moral observations as a matter of fact, for things like us to see….in the first place.

That’s the entirety of natures contribution to moral values and moral agency, from a realists pov. Giving us eyes to see.

That’s the topline to the opq ( good riddance, fucking moron ). Being able to produce the tools or structures required to assess the other thing…even if the other thing is there( really there) in the absence of such possessions.

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