(June 2, 2022 at 3:28 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: As before, what we call those things may not be a complicated version of x. It may be that below some level of complexity there is no x.
That below that level there is y.
That below that level ir outside of those circumstances or without that crucial attribute…no matter how complex…it’s y, and not x.
Moral agency isn’t a hard place to draw that line in principle. We draw it in practice. There’s a difference between thing that do bad z in ignorance or without volition, and things that do. Knowledge….and volition.
Plants may not know shit. Doesn’t prevent them from behaving intelligently, but it dies prevent them from begaving as moral agents.
It seems to me the only feature that arguably is not required for what we colloquially call instinct, as might be found in a flat worm, but which is required for what we might call intellect and initiative, is the ability to act based on predictions of outcome under circumstances that is a much looser analogue of some past experience.
