Morality in Nature

[bennyboy]

Something being developed and held by brain function doesn't make it a process.

Sure it does. Every time that idea or data is accessed (i.e. any time it affects any part of a person's thinking or behavior), there is active functioning. There is no passive data in the brain.

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.

We don't punish people based on abstracts. We punish them based on behaviors, i.e. the process of translating the environment through moral (and other) ideas and outputting a behavior. Now, since you claim that the behavior is inevitable FOR THAT PERSON, he could not have done other than he did.

If this punishment is an attempt at conditioning, okay. If it is moral retribution, then it is unsupportable.