Morality in Nature

[bennyboy]

I see your redundancy and raise you two: maybe it's the ability to monitor the monitoring of the monitoring of the monitoring.

That's required for higher level conceptualization processes.

Okay, so let's take a community of people. Not only does each individual monitor his own process of monitoring: the entire group monitors the ability of each individual to monitor his own process of monitoring. By your terms, this is sufficient to label the community as a singular agent, and to state that it is self-aware.

Nope.

Each individual monitoring his own monitoring is self-awareness. So, we already know at which level self-awareness occurs and any monitoring done is attributed to individual self-awareness.

When regarded as a singular entity, that is, one level above the individual level, the community doesn't behave like a self-aware being. The individuals are aware of each-other and they are aware that they live in a community, but the community as a whole is not aware of itself. Compare the concept of zeitgeist as an illustration of this phenomenon.

The community totally behaves like a self-aware being. It changes its mores, it responds to crises, it even develops new ways to monitor itself (clay tablets, newspapers, Facebook). And parts of the brain are very much aware of each other-- some parts of the brain specifically have the function of monitoring the function of other brain parts.

I think basically you're special pleading-- awareness is what you define it, but any other thing that meets your criteria is faced with new conditions and criteria.

This is morality meets Gaia. I didn't take you for such a hippie!

Are you prejudiced against hippies?

Absolutely. They don't shower enough, and they keep talking about things like watching the watcher or monitoring the monitor. And the cute ones sometimes go home with me, making my friends jealous, and then insist on sleeping head-to-toe. Not a fan.