How Moral Responsibility arises from Consciousness

[Belinda]

I'd be identifiable...

"Identifiable" is an epistemological concern.

"Identity," as we are talking about it, is an ontological one.

There's a difference: because what a thing is, remains what it is, regardless of whether or not anybody presently knows what it is.

It's not about how we know who's who: it's about how anybody or anything is what it is, and not another thing.

Yes; my example was inadequate of detectives identifying a corpse.

Genesis which is ontologiy describes the creation of separate things as man- made. Sure, God made the land and sea and light itself but man identified the particular beings.

[Terrapin Station]

Actually that makes it clear what you seem to mean. I cannot agree with it, but I see no good reason to debate it.

I do have one question, because it nags me. If there is some entity with a specific attribute, a certain mass, for example, are you saying that the mass is not the same mass a moment later? If that is what you are saying, did the first mass go away and become replaced by a new mass. If the mass is not the same, "identical," mass, it must be a different mass. What changed and how did it change?

Now that may not be what you are saying, I understand. But I think you can understand what nags me. I'm also not quite sure what you mean by the word, "identical." That may be what I'm not understanding.

So mass is tricky, because it's difficult to construe mass as something without a mathematical aspect. For example, mass is often said to be the "amount of matter" that something has, or the more typical physics definition is that it's a quantitative measure of inertia. So if we're saying that mass is an objective property, and we're going with one of those mathematics-oriented definitions, then all of a sudden we're positing objective mathematical properties/objects, etc., which is a mess; and in general I don't buy that mathematics is objective.

On the other hand, I do agree that there is objective matter and that there are objective properties that amount to inertia. And in my view there are objective relations, and some of those form the ideational basis of mathematics (without literally being mathematics). So the question is in what way, if any, can something's matter or inertia can remain the same over time.

What I'm referring to above in talking about something being the same, especially in an ontological sense, is whether it's literally what we'd call "one item" (so "numerically identical") that's somehow multiply instantiated. That "one item" is both here and there, spatially or temporally, so that two occurrences are somehow just a single thing. Spatially, I think that's incoherent, but temporally, there's one way that it can be coherent, and maybe this can apply to (amount of) matter or inertia.

It's important for this to remember that all that time is is change, including motion (motion is a type of change). So the one way it can make sense to talk about identity through time is if we're talking about changes to other things, but not to the thing in question. For example, we're saying that x is "identical through time," based on x not changing (so in a sense there's no time for x, or time doesn't pass for x) but y and z change as a relative reference point for time passing.

However, a problem with this is that at least x's relations to y and z have changed if y and z have changed (so in that sense time does pass for x), and especially given that mass seems to be a relational property (again, this is a fairly standard view in physics--mass is thought to obtain in the first place via interaction with the Higgs field, mass changes with relative velocity, etc.), then mass probably doesn't stay the same through time, even if the idea isn't completely incoherent (as I believe multiple spatial instantiations of a single thing is). Does this mean that we'll measure different weights (we measure mass via weight while understanding that the two are not the same thing, they're just correlated) for what we consider the "same thing" at different times? No. But any device fine-grained enough to measure the differences that obtain would at the same time interfere with the object in question to an extent that the measurement device would "become part of the measurement" effectively, and the measurement wouldn't be accurate.

[Terrapin Station]

The whole story of identity, the awareness of oneself and everything surrounding, is completely brain centered. Only in humans does it extend itself beyond the physical into a soul or spirit concept as if it were a separate ontology. All of these non-substances is what the brain substance produces. There isn't anything else to provide for it. Everything which exists in the universe, from planets to people have one thing in common: they're all produced by quantum fields of which the brain, human or not, is only ONE manifestation.

I wasn't talking about "personal identity" above. That's a different idea.

[Immanuel Can]

Genesis which is ontologiy describes the creation of separate things as man- made. Sure, God made the land and sea and light itself but man identified the particular beings.

Well, that's two different things.

According to Genesis, God made everything...including man and woman, but also including the entire world of objects, animals, plants, fish...and so on. All man did was to assign names (epistemologically) to what already existed (ontologically).

Man didn't create. He didn't generate any of it. He just identified the name by which the already-existent would be first known.

[RCSaunders]

Actually that makes it clear what you seem to mean. I cannot agree with it, but I see no good reason to debate it.

I do have one question, because it nags me. If there is some entity with a specific attribute, a certain mass, for example, are you saying that the mass is not the same mass a moment later? If that is what you are saying, did the first mass go away and become replaced by a new mass. If the mass is not the same, "identical," mass, it must be a different mass. What changed and how did it change?

Now that may not be what you are saying, I understand. But I think you can understand what nags me. I'm also not quite sure what you mean by the word, "identical." That may be what I'm not understanding.

So mass is tricky, because it's difficult to construe mass as something without a mathematical aspect. For example, mass is often said to be the "amount of matter" that something has, or the more typical physics definition is that it's a quantitative measure of inertia. So if we're saying that mass is an objective property, and we're going with one of those mathematics-oriented definitions, then all of a sudden we're positing objective mathematical properties/objects, etc., which is a mess; and in general I don't buy that mathematics is objective.

On the other hand, I do agree that there is objective matter and that there are objective properties that amount to inertia. And in my view there are objective relations, and some of those form the ideational basis of mathematics (without literally being mathematics). So the question is in what way, if any, can something's matter or inertia can remain the same over time.

What I'm referring to above in talking about something being the same, especially in an ontological sense, is whether it's literally what we'd call "one item" (so "numerically identical") that's somehow multiply instantiated. That "one item" is both here and there, spatially or temporally, so that two occurrences are somehow just a single thing. Spatially, I think that's incoherent, but temporally, there's one way that it can be coherent, and maybe this can apply to (amount of) matter or inertia.

It's important for this to remember that all that time is is change, including motion (motion is a type of change). So the one way it can make sense to talk about identity through time is if we're talking about changes to other things, but not to the thing in question. For example, we're saying that x is "identical through time," based on x not changing (so in a sense there's no time for x, or time doesn't pass for x) but y and z change as a relative reference point for time passing.

However, a problem with this is that at least x's relations to y and z have changed if y and z have changed (so in that sense time does pass for x), and especially given that mass seems to be a relational property (again, this is a fairly standard view in physics--mass is thought to obtain in the first place via interaction with the Higgs field, mass changes with relative velocity, etc.), then mass probably doesn't stay the same through time, even if the idea isn't completely incoherent (as I believe multiple spatial instantiations of a single thing is). Does this mean that we'll measure different weights (we measure mass via weight while understanding that the two are not the same thing, they're just correlated) for what we consider the "same thing" at different times? No. But any device fine-grained enough to measure the differences that obtain would at the same time interfere with the object in question to an extent that the measurement device would "become part of the measurement" effectively, and the measurement wouldn't be accurate.

Thank you for that thoughtful explanation. I understand why you question identity in the ontological sense. It does not convince me, but I do understand why you have the view you have.

There are two things you said, I cannot have the same view of, however. I'll only explain why because you might like to consider them, not to convince you.

The first is this statement:

It's important for this to remember that all that time is is change, including motion (motion is a type of change).

Conceptually, the three primary attibutes of ontological existence are position, motion (change of position) and acceleration (change in motion). Every single physics principle can be reduced to these three characteristics.

All three are relationships and have no meaning except as relationships. Anything that exists only has a position relative to other existents. All positions can be identified by the two metrics direction and distance. A thing's position is determined by it direction and distance relative to other existents.

In a static universe, positional relationships would be the only attributes there are, but of course we live in a dynamic universe, which means there is, "change." Change in position is motion. Motion is nothing more than the change in position of an existent relative to another existent, that is, a change in one existent's direction, distance, or both relative to another existent.

All motion can be identified by the two metrics, time and velocity. A things motion is determined by its amount of change relative to the amount of change of aother motion. Time is the amount of motion of one thing (how much its distance and direction changes) relative to a specific motion of another thing (a specific change in its direction or distance). Velocity is the amount change in direction or distance of one motion relative to a aother motion's change.

Acceleration is just another change, a change in motion, either its direction, velocity, or both, which I'll not discuss here.

Since direction, distance, time, velocity, and rate of acceleration are only metrics, that is, arbitrary ways of measuring the relationships between the positions, motions, and accelerations, they only exist epistemologically. The relationship are certainly real ontological phenomena, that is, the relationships between motions identified as time and velocity are real, but they are not independent ontological existents. There is no thing, "time," and there is no thing, "velocity."

The other thing I cannot quite view in the same way you do is:

What I'm referring to above in talking about something being the same, especially in an ontological sense, is whether it's literally what we'd call "one item"

The reason this does not make sense to me is unless something simply is what it is, there can be no motion, and no such thing as time or velocity. If a thing cannot change position (which it couldn't if it is not the same thing) it cannot move.* The problem seems to be trying to view things as, "existing in time," because our own consciousness covers a lot of change (which we call time) but time is not a thing or place. (The same mistake is made about space which is nothing more than the fact that positions must all be different.)

*[One might picture things as an infinite string of infinitesimally enduring different things in time, I suppose, but don't see how that is not just a different way of picturing things remaining the same.]

[Belinda]

Genesis which is ontologiy describes the creation of separate things as man- made. Sure, God made the land and sea and light itself but man identified the particular beings.

Well, that's two different things.

According to Genesis, God made everything...including man and woman, but also including the entire world of objects, animals, plants, fish...and so on. All man did was to assign names (epistemologically) to what already existed (ontologically).

Man didn't create. He didn't generate any of it. He just identified the name by which the already-existent would be first known.

Genesis can be more interesting than simply labeling things by means of vocal sounds.Genesis means not only labelling but also identifying the furniture of existence that matters, i.e. conceptualising.

2:19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
2:20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.

Until Adam conceptualised every beast these existed as possibilities only. God needed Adam for doing more than simply naming. Same today. God needs men to do His creative work on Earth.

[Dubious]

The whole story of identity, the awareness of oneself and everything surrounding, is completely brain centered. Only in humans does it extend itself beyond the physical into a soul or spirit concept as if it were a separate ontology. All of these non-substances is what the brain substance produces. There isn't anything else to provide for it. Everything which exists in the universe, from planets to people have one thing in common: they're all produced by quantum fields of which the brain, human or not, is only ONE manifestation.

I wasn't talking about "personal identity" above. That's a different idea.

I know. I wasn't referring to what you wrote but what HQ wrote whose post was directly above mine.

Re...

Wilder Penfield's work with epileptics; split brain surgeries; and surgeries where significant portions of the brain are removed all point toward you, not bein' solely the result of workings of a brain.

[Vitruvius]

I am puzzled that so many writers assume – usually with no attempt at justification – that moral responsibility has something to do with determinism, or more specifically with being an “ultimate cause”. What makes this puzzling is that it seems to be almost universally accepted in common usage that the possibility of being morally responsible is confined to conscious beings. An earthquake, for example, may be “responsible” (in another sense) for much suffering, but (aside from animism) the earth is never held responsible in a moral sense. So a sound theory of moral responsibility has to be founded on the role of consciousness.

How would that work? Firstly, let us clear up an obvious source of confusion here, because “responsibility” is used in two different senses, a binary (yes/no) sense and a sense that is a matter of degree. For convenience I will confine the term “responsibility” to the former sense, and refer to the “how much?” sense as "culpability" (or “praiseworthiness” as the case may be). The courts have long distinguished between the verdict and the sentence, so philosophers should have no problem distinguishing the fact of responsibility for a bad act, from the degree of culpability for it. A person may be clearly responsible for an act but with such strong mitigating circumstances that they can hardly be regarded as culpable.

Initially, the fact of responsibility has to be defined in the first person, since that is where consciousness is first identified. If I am conscious of choosing an act, from among other acts that would be possible given that I chose them, then I have a relationship to that act, and that is the relationship that we call “responsibility”. So networks of causes do not have to be traced back any further than the point at which consciousness of this relationship entered into the process by which the act was chosen.

Once we have a concept of moral responsibility in the first-person, the third-person meaning can be derived from it, by virtue of our ability to recognize and thus to identify with consciousness in others. I hold another person responsible for an act if I believe that he chose it while conscious that he was making a choice.

So now let us briefly look at “culpability”: the fact of responsibility but with mitigation taken into account. Without going into further detail, we can acknowledge that mitigation typically stems from any of three things: lack of competence to make the choice, psychological pressures of many kinds, and genuine repentance. What is relevant here is that all of these involve consciousness. If we could read a perpetrator’s mind perfectly, there would be no need to enquire further. However, psychological identification is not the same as being psychologically identical: I can mentally step into another’s shoes, but not see life through her eyes, so to speak. Hence we have to use proxies to provide pointers to the relevant features of another person’s mind, namely the objective circumstances which gave rise to her conscious experience. Nothing in this, however, provides any grounds for metaphysical enquiries into original causation or the like.

This is necessarily an extremely compressed account of the theory I am advocating: for example, the social construction of responsibility has to be added to the picture. (Chapter 8 of my e-book “New Thoughts on Free Will” provides a more comprehensive account.)

Morality long pre-dates human intellectual awareness. I think of it in terms of Saussure's structural relations of kinship tribes, cross referenced with Jane Goodall's observations of chimps; because troops of chimpanzees have hierarchies, and food sharing, and grooming - according to social status. They remember who reciprocates and withhold such favours accordingly in future. Generally, morality is an evolutionary pre-disposition that only gains explicit articulation with the occurrence of human intelligence, but it's based in the behavioural intelligence of pre-conscious organisms. Individually, morality is a sense - a sensitivity to moral implication bred into us by evolution, insofar as it proved an advantage within, and to, the hunter gatherer tribal group.

Confusion occurs because hunter gatherer tribal groups joined together to form multi-tribal societies and civilisations, and did this by referencing an explicit moral narrative to the authority of God. It thus upon discovering science refutes religion, Nietzsche despairs that morality is rendered groundless, but he was wrong. The well spring of morality is within us. Religion, law, politics, economics, etc, are expressions of that innate moral sense - and consequently, religion should have recognised and incorporated science. (Instead religion branded science heresy, putting it outside the social contract, and so science has been used irresponsibly, brining us to the brink of extinction.) The 'inversion of values' Nietzsche misidentified was actually the difference between hunter gather tribal morality, and multi tribal social morality - but the nihilistic ubermensch is a myth. The weak did not fool the strong. The strong agreed terms to prevent social inter-tribal conflict, and weld society into a single group under belief in the same God.

One might ask why chimps have morality, and it is a question of survival within the reality of the environment. As the moral individual prospers within the tribe, the tribe of moral individuals prospers in relation to other tribes. We can then trace this back further to the relation between the organism and reality, and then we encounter the anthropic principle - in this context, the idea that the universe itself must necessarily have a moral dimension to allow for the evolution of moral beings. I'm agnostic because I don't know what that implies, but it's fun to think about!

[Immanuel Can]

Until Adam conceptualised every beast these existed as possibilities only.

You mean you don't think there was an animal with a long snout until man said "elephant"?

Hardly.

God needed Adam

"Needed"? The term never applies to God. God chooses things. God wants certain things. God does things. But He never "needs" anything.

I suggest your concept of God is too small.

[Belinda]

Until Adam conceptualised every beast these existed as possibilities only.

You mean you don't think there was an animal with a long snout until man said "elephant"?

Hardly.

God needed Adam

"Needed"? The term never applies to God. God chooses things. God wants certain things. God does things. But He never "needs" anything.

I suggest your concept of God is too small.

That was a flippant way to describe elephant! 'Elephant' is the name of a concept and it's also the name of a sort of being (or a particular exemplar of that sort of being). Not only did men conceptualise elephant , human centres of consciousness also created this species of being. If there were no centres of consciousness there would be no elephants, except insofar as an elephant individual exists for itself. Note that an elephant individual existing for itself probably does not conceptualise 'elephant', 'exist' , or 'self'.

When I wrote "God needed Adam" I was writing within the context of the myth. Within the context of the Genesis Creation narrative , and according to an important idea of the supreme deity, it was the nature of God to create time and space. God is a way to think about eternity, the eternal now, the unchanging. God's creation is a way to think about the obverse of that coin of which eternity is the reverse. The coin itself is God or nature.

It is your concept of God that is too small! Choosing is an activity that is limited to temporal beings in a relative world.

[Immanuel Can]

That was a flippant way to describe elephant!

They won't complain...

Not only did men conceptualise elephant , human centres of consciousness also created this species of being.

Men invented the word "elephant." They did not create the elephant. They assigned it a species. They did not constitute it's life. They made up a concept to describe that which was already in existence.

You're still confused by the difference between epistemology and ontology. Epistemology describes only what people happen to know. Ontology describes things that exist, whether or not men know, have a concept, or assign it a species.

Men never created an elephant. They only invented the words for it.

...an elephant individual existing for itself probably does not conceptualise 'elephant', 'exist' , or 'self'.

Very likely true. But so what? Are we now concerned with elephant epistemology? It may not "conceptualize" itself, but it exists, even if it doesn't conceptualize itself.

When I wrote "God needed Adam" I was writing within the context of the myth.

The story neither states nor implies it. You won't find it being said that God "needs" man for anything.

God is a way to think about eternity, the eternal now, the unchanging.

No, He's a self-existent Person. He has His own epistemology, and His own ontology. No part of Him depends on man, or on what man knows or thinks. God pre-existed man, by definition, since He created man. And there was an infinite amount of time (if we can even use that word of eternity) when no men or women existed. That much we can be sure of, since you and I, and all mankind, are contingent beings of some eighty years or so duration, at best.

Pantheism does have he problem you cite, though. Since it imagines God is Monistic, it has to posit that creation is necessary and eternal (two things we can easily observe it's actually not), and that its god needs there to be a physical world in order for the god itself to exist. The Pantheistic god is not self-existent but dependent...hence its unavoidable appeal to Material-Spiritual Dualism, with both being eternal.

But that's only another reason why Pantheism is wrong. It's not even plausible scientifically, since the material world is obviously contingent and temporal, not eternal.

[Terrapin Station]

that is, the relationships between motions identified as time and velocity are real, but they are not independent ontological existents. There is no thing, "time," and there is no thing, "velocity."

They're not "independent objects," right, they're relations. Relations are real, of course, but not as independent objects. (Thinking that relations are being proposed as "independent objects" would be a very strange misunderstanding of what is being said.)

The reason this does not make sense to me is unless something simply is what it is, there can be no motion, and no such thing as time or velocity. If a thing cannot change position (which it couldn't if it is not the same thing) it cannot move.* The problem seems to be trying to view things as, "existing in time," because our own consciousness covers a lot of change (which we call time) but time is not a thing or place. (The same mistake is made about space which is nothing more than the fact that positions must all be different.)

*[One might picture things as an infinite string of infinitesimally enduring different things in time, I suppose, but don't see how that is not just a different way of picturing things remaining the same.]

So if you have, two things, represented by slashes, situated like this:

....\................\

relative to each other (imagine the periods aren't there), and then we have, in succession, this:

...\................\
then
..\..............\
then
.\............\

And so on.

Well, if at each subsequent point there, each of the two slashes are disappearing and being replaced by others, there's still relative motion both in that there are slashes relatively moving to the left and relatively moving closer together.

[Terrapin Station]

Morality long pre-dates human intellectual awareness. I think of it in terms of Saussure's structural relations of kinship tribes, cross referenced with Jane Goodall's observations of chimps; because troops of chimpanzees have hierarchies, and food sharing, and grooming - according to social status. They remember who reciprocates and withhold such favours accordingly in future. Generally, morality is an evolutionary pre-disposition that only gains explicit articulation with the occurrence of human intelligence, but it's based in the behavioural intelligence of pre-conscious organisms. Individually, morality is a sense - a sensitivity to moral implication bred into us by evolution, insofar as it proved an advantage within, and to, the hunter gatherer tribal group.

While I agree that morality would predate humans, I don't agree that morality could obtain sans consciousness. For one, morality has to be about behavioral choices, which can't obtain without contemplating options.

[RCSaunders]

that is, the relationships between motions identified as time and velocity are real, but they are not independent ontological existents. There is no thing, "time," and there is no thing, "velocity."

They're not "independent objects," right, they're relations. Relations are real, of course, but not as independent objects. (Thinking that relations are being proposed as "independent objects" would be a very strange misunderstanding of what is being said.)

The reason this does not make sense to me is unless something simply is what it is, there can be no motion, and no such thing as time or velocity. If a thing cannot change position (which it couldn't if it is not the same thing) it cannot move.* The problem seems to be trying to view things as, "existing in time," because our own consciousness covers a lot of change (which we call time) but time is not a thing or place. (The same mistake is made about space which is nothing more than the fact that positions must all be different.)

*[One might picture things as an infinite string of infinitesimally enduring different things in time, I suppose, but don't see how that is not just a different way of picturing things remaining the same.]

So if you have, two things, represented by slashes, situated like this:

....\................\

relative to each other (imagine the periods aren't there), and then we have, in succession, this:

...\................\
then
..\..............\
then
.\............\

And so on.

Well, if at each subsequent point there, each of the two slashes are disappearing and being replaced by others, there's still relative motion both in that there are slashes relatively moving to the left and relatively moving closer together.

That's a good illustration, I think.

If a slash, "disappears," and is replaced by another slash it would be motion in the cinematic sense. But only if a slash is replaced by a slash, not a backslash or ampersand. My point is, a slash is only a slash if it is really a slash, that is always exactly the same thing, else each replacement, "slash," is actually something different (almost a slash, or nearly a slash, but not actually a slash) and there would be no motion. That's the way it seems to me.

[Terrapin Station]

If a slash, "disappears," and is replaced by another slash it would be motion in the cinematic sense. But only if a slash is replaced by a slash, not a backslash or ampersand. My point is, a slash is only a slash if it is really a slash, that is always exactly the same thing, else each replacement, "slash," is actually something different (almost a slash, or nearly a slash, but not actually a slash) and there would be no motion. That's the way it seems to me.

Why wouldn't there still be things moving if they were different?

....\............*
...!..........&
..^........%


There's still relative motion of objects to the left and towards each other there. That's the case merely due to the fact that the spatial relations between (different) objects are changing.