Morality in Nature

[bennyboy]

Unless there's a magical morality floating in the heavens, then morality, decisions, behaviors, world view, etc. are all processes.

Wrong. A process indicates a series of actions. The word doesn't apply to sets of principles or ideas like morality, worldview etc.

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?

The narrative as I believe you have it is that a person is born a product of his DNA and his environment (starting in the womb). Each experience he has results in brain activity, including learning. Then when a person decides to behave immorally (whatever that is taken to mean), it's because of a deterministic interaction between his internal environment (hormones, brain state, etc.) and his external environment (people calling him stupid or something).

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.

In the deterministic view, it is inevitable that a killer should kill. Given his brain state (which follows a deterministic chain right back to the womb), and his particular environment, he could not have done anything but kill.

And given that the brain state is "him" and the brain state controls the subsequent actions, he, thus bears the responsibility for those actions.

. . . 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.

So the killer is punished not for something he could control (i.e. a moral failing). He is punished for the way his brain processes information and forms behaviors. In fact, he HIMSELF is nothing but a collection of processes.

And they're being punished.

What makes you think that it was something he "could not control"? The role of an agent in a deterministic causal chain isn't disregarded so simply.

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?

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.