Morality in Nature

[bennyboy]

Some groups of people certainly monitor other groups of people, and modify the ways of dealing with them. How is this different from a group of neurons monitoring other groups of neurons, and modifying the way they are monitored? (insert next special criterion here. . . )

No special criterion. The neurons themselves are not self-aware, which is why generation of self-awareness enters at that stage. The individuals are already self-aware - which is why the community as a whole is not.

How do you know a person is aware? I think you're moving the goalposts here. Since you keep making words mean what they don't mean, I need your most precise definition of awareness to continue with this discussion. My prediction is that you'll give a definition, I'll show how something meets that definition, and you'll start piling on extra criteria. I have good evidence for supposing this prediction to be likely to come true.

Anyway, back to morality. All this stuff about monitoring the monitor has shown that a brain, if part if it is dysfunctional, can lead to a person doing a bad behavior, like a murder. But what you haven't explained is why we should interpret this as a moral failing, which requires punishment. Why wouldn't you interpret it as a mental disability, and see that as proof that a person SHOULDN'T be punished?

On the contrary, if the bad behavior (murder) is the result of a part of brain being dysfunctional, then it is not interpreted as a moral failing and the person is not punished for it.

First of all, baloney. Killers in the states are constantly sent to death row, when seeing 5 seconds of an interview would show they should have been in an institution, not walking among free people.

Second, what if the person's psychology is shattered by watching his mother and sister's heads get blown off by a cruise missile intended for a distant uncle? What if he was the victim of serious child abuse? What if he's been brainwashed? What if he's exposed to an insufficient diet, so that his brain isn't functioning normally? What if he's addicted to drugs at a young age, and the drugs destroy his ability to respond to social cues, or to have the feelings of sympathy necessary for a moral view to function?

This is a simple argument:
1. No healthy person would kill unnecessarily.
2. A serial killer is therefore obviously unhealthy.
3. A person shouldn't be morally accountable for his own illnesses.
4. A peson therefore can't be morally acountable for serial killing.

Premise 1 is wrong.
A healthy person can kill unnecessarily.
And most killers do have a reason for killing.

No he can't. A person willing to kill unnecessarily is not mentally healthy. Either he's received damage to his brain, or his world view has been broken. Either way, he couldn't have chosen to have the brain damage, or to have his world view broken. Even in the case of a total sociopathic killer, there's some kind of reason WHY he has the impulse to kill, and WHY he doesn't resist the impulse, which is beyond his control.

And a killer can provide whatever reasons they want; I have reasons to kill about 20 people a day, but I don't-- because I'm mentally capable of restraining my impulses.

Given that epilepsy is a chronic condition, that person should not have been driving in the first place. So yes, he should be ticketed for blocking traffic. Similarly, if the stroke patient had a reasonable expectation of having a stroke, then he too can be held accountable for the fatal multi-car pile-up. Although, prosecution might be a tad difficult on the account of the pile-up being fatal.

The specific examples aren't important. The point is that there are many cases in which due to a condition beyond a person's control, they may BEHAVE in ways that are normally considered immoral, but with no intention to do so. And ultimately, ALL people are like this-- you just have to go back farther to find that deterministic event that led to the resultant "crime."