Evolution cannot account for morality

[arewethereyet]

It's a guess made to sound like fact.

if you can’t tell the difference made by “IMHO” then you are more clueless in addition to insecure than I thought.

Gee, you are so wise.

[Angrboda]

JFC,............KMN.

Then I'll find out.

Fu*k me running.

[The Grand Nudger]

So, a lot.

I’ll preface this entire but with “rightly or wrongly”.

Plants are not taken to be self aware. Rather, they’re pointed to as yet another way that life can effect at least some of the behaviors we think to be specifically consequential and most easily observed in self aware things.

I used the example of auxin before…but I could have just as easily used our own hearts beat. It’s not due to awareness, instinct, or intent that a photophobic chemical collects on the shaded side of a plant causing it to grow opposite…effectively…-into- the sun. The same is true of our heart beating. It’s undirected, the impetus unfelt. It works, ofc, just like auxin works. To say it’s undirected is not to say that nothing regulates it- in both cases there are underlying causes and even checks. It’s just not a part of any intentionality we can observe.

Nevertheless, having a beating heart or being oriented by auxin is not what anyone is talking about when they discuss moral agency. Most animals are minimally self aware, however, and it’s because of this that we can observe analog behaviors in…say……herding animals- that come to us as a rudimentary version of some human x. It follows from this that most animals could even be minimally cruel or decent.

[Anomalocaris]

if you can’t tell the difference made by “IMHO” then you are more clueless in addition to insecure than I thought.

Gee, you are so wise.

Aren’t everyone compared to you?

[brewer]

Vegetable pants fly dirt radiating wisdom.

[arewethereyet]

Gee, you are so wise.

Aren’t everyone compared to you?

Funny how you don't speak the language unless you are parroting from Google.

[Anomalocaris]

I always speak the language needed to make you feel small, insecure and seething with the pathetic urge to regain some fake sense of significance by lashing out with pathetically wimpy retorts and low blows, sweetheart.


I didn’t check, but maybe you are right, your smallness and insecurity is so stereotypical that I could have quoted the above from google?

[Angrboda]

Cat fight!

[The Grand Nudger]

All super fun. Still continuing from the above, and still with the caveat of rightly or wrongly. The problem for moral agency vis a vis plants is not the they’re even minimally self aware- but that even though they’re not - they engage in behaviors, some of those behaviors are intelligent, and at least some of those are moral behavior analogs.

Kin selection, distress and cross species cooperation calls. Predation. In rare cases, limited motility and decision making. All thus on top of “growing up”..all…, without any self awareness.

The question becomes not whether a plant can be a moral agent…but what portion of our own intelligent behaviors aimed at purportedly moral goals…in truth….round down to whatever a plant is doing. We know that we can engage in similar behaviors, we know they overlap with moral phenomena….but it does seem like you don’t have to possess a sense of self or feel compelled in order to arrive at all of them. A plant may not be a moral agent, not responsible for any decisions of a moral import.

-and yet….

In short, it’s not so much that plants and other non sentient things call the categorization into question on principle- or in terms…but that their example suggests we may not be the agents -we think we are- in practice.

( I can provide a rationale for this- plants were going to do -something- and moral ends are in the set of possible outcomes…. more than one way to skin a cat..,, but it’s a hand waving non explanation at the very bottom. One that fails to respect a very real correlation in outcomes. We’re doing something different simply because we perceive the same thing in a way that they do not.)

[Angrboda]

All super fun.  Still continuing from the above, and still with the caveat of rightly or wrongly.  The problem for moral agency vis a vis plants is not the they’re even minimally self aware- but that even though they’re not - they engage in behaviors, some of those behaviors are intelligent, and at least some of those are moral behavior analogs.

Kin selection, distress and cross species cooperation calls.  Predation.  In rare cases, limited motility and decision making.  All thus on top of “growing up”..all…, without any self awareness.  

The question becomes not whether a plant can be a moral agent…but what portion of our own intelligent behaviors aimed at purportedly moral goals…in truth….round down to whatever a plant is doing.  We know that we can engage in similar behaviors, we know they overlap with moral phenomena….but it does seem like you don’t have to possess a sense of self or feel compelled in order to arrive at all of them.  A plant may not be a moral agent, not responsible for any decisions of a moral import.

-and yet….

In short, it’s not so much that plants and other non sentient things call the categorization into question on principle- or in terms…but that their example  suggests we may not be the agents -we think we are- in practice.

( I can provide a rationale for this- plants were going to do -something- and moral ends are in the set of possible outcomes…. more than one way to skin a cat..,, but it’s a hand waving non explanation at the very bottom.  One that fails to respect a very real correlation in outcomes.  We’re doing something different simply because we perceive the same thing in a way that they do not.)

If evolution had depended upon our agency to accomplish the goal of morals, our species would have perished. The conundrum for those that believe that our morals are an evolved response is that our agency is no longer required.