My own feeling is that any system that can move from one environment (E1) into another (E2) and compare its representations of those environments in order to decide whether to stay in E2 or return to E1 has something that shares a family relationship with what I call “morality” in a human; the distinction at that point is one of how sophisticated the representation-comparing system, and whether its terminal values are commensurable.
Rocks and hot air can’t do this at all; rabbits and foxes and humans and pebblesorters all can.
A human’s system for doing this is significantly more sophisticated than a rabbit’s, though. And I would agree that there is a point where increased sophistication crosses a threshold and deserves a new label. So, sure, if we want to say that what a rabbit has doesn’t deserve the label “morality” but is rather a mere evaluative function, that’s fine. I probably agree.
Ditto for chimpanzees, bonobos, and six-day-old infants, if you like. In each of those cases I think an argument could be made for drawing the line a little bit lower, but it’s an acceptable place to draw the line. OTOH, denying the label “morality” to the evaluative function of a healthy adult human who happens to disagree with you is going too far. (Not that anyone here is doing that.)
It’s a lot like talking about when a human becomes an “adult.” It’s a perfectly meaningful distinction, and some answers are clearly wrong—a six-day-old infant simply isn’t an adult and that’s all there is to it -- but there’s a large grey zone within which where you draw the line is just a matter of convention.
My own feeling is that any system that can move from one environment (E1) into another (E2) and compare its representations of those environments in order to decide whether to stay in E2 or return to E1 has something that shares a family relationship with what I call “morality” in a human; the distinction at that point is one of how sophisticated the representation-comparing system, and whether its terminal values are commensurable.
Rocks and hot air can’t do this at all; rabbits and foxes and humans and pebblesorters all can.
A human’s system for doing this is significantly more sophisticated than a rabbit’s, though. And I would agree that there is a point where increased sophistication crosses a threshold and deserves a new label. So, sure, if we want to say that what a rabbit has doesn’t deserve the label “morality” but is rather a mere evaluative function, that’s fine. I probably agree.
Ditto for chimpanzees, bonobos, and six-day-old infants, if you like. In each of those cases I think an argument could be made for drawing the line a little bit lower, but it’s an acceptable place to draw the line. OTOH, denying the label “morality” to the evaluative function of a healthy adult human who happens to disagree with you is going too far. (Not that anyone here is doing that.)
It’s a lot like talking about when a human becomes an “adult.” It’s a perfectly meaningful distinction, and some answers are clearly wrong—a six-day-old infant simply isn’t an adult and that’s all there is to it -- but there’s a large grey zone within which where you draw the line is just a matter of convention.