Morality in Nature

[bennyboy]

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.

There is passive data in brain. A lot of memories, knowledge and ideas that are not accessed and therefore are not a part of active functioning. Further evidence that the process of accessing data does not make the data a process.

At the time of access, it ceases to be passive. The neurons which encode the data fire up, send signals to other parts of the brain, and affect behavior. That's a process.

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.

On the contrary, we do punish people based on abstracts. All ideas, principles, morals, laws and rules are abstractions. It is only when their behavior does not measure up to an abstract standard that they are punished.

I'm not talking about the mores of the judges. I'm talking about the immoral behavior of the person being judged. We don't care what evil ideas he holds-- so long as he shits once a day, eats three times a day, sleeps normal hours, and goes to church on Sunday, he's a swell guy. We don't care HOW he arrives at his good behavior-- so long as he doesn't start raping kids, killing moms, or voting Democrat.

The process you indicated assumes a set of abstract principles as the core. And given that that set of principles is not inevitable for the person, the consequent behavior is not inevitable either. Thus, since the behavior is not inevitable for that person, he could have done other than he did.

Why would you give that that set of principles is not inevitable for the person? At what point in the person's life, in a deterministic view, did he have a chance to learn other than he learned, feel other than he felt, and form other than the ideas he has formed?

This is special pleading: "Everything follows from a deterministic interaction between particles in the universe. Except that serial killing bastard-- HE has to fry, because he should have (magically) caused himself to turn out other than he did."

You are desperately hanging onto the concept of free will, while you insist on a model of the universe with which it is incompatible.