Morality in Nature

[genkaus]

. . . unless it's being recalled and used in the brain.

Nope. Even in that case data is not a process.

In your model, the sun chooses to burn, and the rock chooses to roll down the hill under the force of gravity, in the exact same way that a person chooses to act in a particular way. The only difference is that rock-rolling is more difficult to predict. But you could say something like, "I think that cloud is going to choose to rain when it hits Seattle" as well as you could say, "I think that girl is going to choose the pink umbrella."

Wrong. As I said, choice requires an agency, which the sun and the rock do not have. The girl, however, chooses pink.

This is my point. ALL the words in which humans are considered singular entities are as fictional as the idea of actually-free-will is in your view. If you say, "Mom's brain processed her environment, accessed her memories, and caused her to hit me," you are only getting it half right. You have to say, "The collection of interconnected but independent processes called Mom has exchibited a hitting behavior." If you accept a moral agent, you have to accept all its implications, including actual-free-will.

I do accept a moral agent with all its implication - including actual free-will. Its just that what I understand by actual free-will is different from what you do.

So back to our murderer-- there IS actually no singular agent responsible for the behavior. Maybe a particular brain region led to the killing, and all the rest of the brain is a nice, functional guy. Maybe he had a stroke, or has a blood clot. Maybe he was abused and his world view is broken. Lumping all those possibilities under a single agency, just because they are collectively called by a single name, is cruel. If there's no single agent (i.e. the brain somehow unified by a spirit, or a will or whatever), then inflicting punishment on the entire system is immoral.

Wrong. There is a set of interconnected processes that constitute a singular agency. A stroke, blood cot or past event are not a part of that agency.