RE: Evolution cannot account for morality
June 2, 2022 at 12:57 pm
(This post was last modified: June 2, 2022 at 1:06 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
All super fun. Still continuing from the above, and still with the caveat of rightly or wrongly. The problem for moral agency vis a vis plants is not the they’re even minimally self aware- but that even though they’re not - they engage in behaviors, some of those behaviors are intelligent, and at least some of those are moral behavior analogs.
Kin selection, distress and cross species cooperation calls. Predation. In rare cases, limited motility and decision making. All thus on top of “growing up”..all…, without any self awareness.
The question becomes not whether a plant can be a moral agent…but what portion of our own intelligent behaviors aimed at purportedly moral goals…in truth….round down to whatever a plant is doing. We know that we can engage in similar behaviors, we know they overlap with moral phenomena….but it does seem like you don’t have to possess a sense of self or feel compelled in order to arrive at all of them. A plant may not be a moral agent, not responsible for any decisions of a moral import.
-and yet….
In short, it’s not so much that plants and other non sentient things call the categorization into question on principle- or in terms…but that their example suggests we may not be the agents -we think we are- in practice.
( I can provide a rationale for this- plants were going to do -something- and moral ends are in the set of possible outcomes…. more than one way to skin a cat..,, but it’s a hand waving non explanation at the very bottom. One that fails to respect a very real correlation in outcomes. We’re doing something different simply because we perceive the same thing in a way that they do not.)
Kin selection, distress and cross species cooperation calls. Predation. In rare cases, limited motility and decision making. All thus on top of “growing up”..all…, without any self awareness.
The question becomes not whether a plant can be a moral agent…but what portion of our own intelligent behaviors aimed at purportedly moral goals…in truth….round down to whatever a plant is doing. We know that we can engage in similar behaviors, we know they overlap with moral phenomena….but it does seem like you don’t have to possess a sense of self or feel compelled in order to arrive at all of them. A plant may not be a moral agent, not responsible for any decisions of a moral import.
-and yet….
In short, it’s not so much that plants and other non sentient things call the categorization into question on principle- or in terms…but that their example suggests we may not be the agents -we think we are- in practice.
( I can provide a rationale for this- plants were going to do -something- and moral ends are in the set of possible outcomes…. more than one way to skin a cat..,, but it’s a hand waving non explanation at the very bottom. One that fails to respect a very real correlation in outcomes. We’re doing something different simply because we perceive the same thing in a way that they do not.)
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