Morality in Nature

[genkaus]

Sure it does. Those principles are ideas, which can exist only in the brain, right? The are developed and held by brain function, right? It is the behavior (by the brain) resulting from those principles (in the brain) that are seen as moral or immoral, and punished, right?

Are you getting confused?
Something being developed and held by brain function doesn't make it a process.

Let me make it simpler - there is data and there is process. When I write down a program in the computer, that program does not automatically become a process. It is a data about how a process is to be executed and it requires a processing software to turn it into a process.

Similarly, you morality, worldview etc. are data generated in your mind by years of learning and evaluating etc. and it is used to guide the process of behavior. That doesn't make it a process in itself.

You are ignoring a significant third aspect - the person himself. When you talk about his external environment and his internal environment, you are assuming the existence of something that can be identified as him. This identity is not equated to internal environment and is involved in the interaction.

Right. The PROCESS of interaction.

You seem even more confused. Ofcourse the entity's interaction is a process - but that interaction is not morality.

. . . which since determinism, he really has no control over. His awareness of his actions isn't truly volitional, it's as a happenstance bystander of brain function. Don't make me quote you saying just that maybe a dozen times.

That's where you are wrong. Given that he is a part of the chain, he has control over the events he causes. The "happenstance bystander" argument works only if you see "him" as something separate and uninvolved in deterministic causation.

Stop using my arguments for the importance of mind against me. Are you now asserting that there is a ghost in the gears which somehow transcends determinism?

There doesn't need to be a ghost. The machine is sufficient.

Either the person could really have acted differently, or he could not. If he could have, then no determinism. If he could not have, then no fair blaming him for murdering or raping.

But that's a false dichotomy. He could've acted differently - if he was a different person. Your error is the assumption that "he" exists separately from the deterministic causal chain - a bystander watching his life play out without any control over it - whereas, in fact, "he", his will and his volition are very much a part of that deterministic causation.