VeganDE

Part 2 of 2:

Coming to your definition of moral agency:

if a creature (human or not) is capable of displaying a set of priorities in how it behaves, and we can notice there are rules governing the way they conduct themselves, then that set of priorities and rules is susceptible to be understood as the moral compass that governs its behavior. [...] To me, morality is intrinsic to any form of complex natural behavior subjected to evolutionary pressure (whether they have cognitive capacity or not).

Either you need to rethink your definition of moral or you are making a mistake here. (Or I am not understanding you here, which is another possibility of course.)
What is moral for you? What does it require?
I was thinking that for you and me, moral - in a nutshell - means distinguishing actions between "good" and "bad", where the exact definition of "good" and "bad" can vary as well as the ethical framework which might be built on that. I need to emphasize the "distinguish" part of the last sentence, as this involves active contemplation about possibilities entangled with an evaluation of "good" and "bad". If I don't misunderstand you here, you say that any influence which lead to a certain behaviour in an organism can already be seen as moral behaviour. But is it though? Take a plant for example. It will grow towards light. Is this moral behaviour? I say it isn't. I say it is a reflex. If the plant is not able to reason about whether it might be advantageous or not and thereby "good" or "bad" for its survival to grow towards light and if it does not have the possibility to "decide" against growing towards light, it can not have moral. The plant does not care whether it is "good" or "bad", because it can not care at all. It just does, behaving purely as a reflex. That this reflex formed at all is the result of an evolutionary process, but it does not enable the plant to make decisions, especially not moral ones.
To me, that's also a characteristic which distinguishes us humans from most animals or other forms of life. We are able to defy our nature by reasoning about it and making an active decision. That's a key component necessary for moral agency which virtually all other forms of life on our space potato lack.

Even if there’s no “Universal” morality, there are objective moralities emergent from the way each species has been driven towards seeking some set of stimuli that might be “good” for their own survival. All that we see as “good” is only “good” because it satisfies that evolutionary drive… not because we happen to have a “thought” about it.

There are intrinsic objectives which emerge from the way organisms evolved, plants seek light, animals seek food, and so on, but those are not "moralities", those are reflexes, instincts, beneficial and detrimental stimuli for the survival and procreation of a species. Yes, our understanding of "good" and "bad" are rooted in an understanding of such beneficial and detrimental stimuli, but to be able to actively, willingly, decide whether we want to confront ourselves or others with a (detrimental) stimuli, is something only we humans as moral agents are capable to do. A cow will feel detrimental stimuli when it is confined on small space, suffering pain from physical damages and will strive to escape from such influences, since those are detrimental stimuli of course. But it can not think about that in such a way that it could make the decision to stay. It lacks the cognitive abilities to do that. We on the other hand can do that. We can expose ourselves to detrimental stimuli willingly. We can expose others to those as well. We can label such actions as "good" or "bad". Cows can't. And wolves can't as well.
Being able to decide, given a set of different actions, is one of the major factors which constitutes a moral agent.

Even if free will was an illusion and our universe was deterministic (which I currently think isn't the case, as I detailed before), you are still able to think about your actions before you act on them. And not only think in a goal oriented manner about that, but in an ethical manner. Even if the result of such a thought process might be determined, you can still have one. And other life forms don't. So why shouldn't you have it? Isn't your deterministic stance on free will not fallable for nihilism again? Because if it is deterministic anyway, doesn't that make life and ethics meaningless again, even creating your own purpose and ethics in an amoral meaningless universe? Why do you seek a logical consistent ethical construct at all? I argue that being able to have these thoughts and contemplations, whether their results are predictable or not, you still need to have them to come to a conclusion for your action. We are able to ask such questions. We are able to get the impression of being able to make such decisions.

But if you do something “bad” without “thinking” (like you said wolfs do), that does not make the act any less “bad”. At most, it just shows that your “thinking” wasn’t the cause responsible for your behavior.

If someone is not able to think about their actions, they are not able to do "good" or "bad" things. But that's just another example for the same concept we are arguing about. To illustrate this, say someone suffers from a brain injury which incapacitaes their higher reasoning. Then they kill someone. Wouldn't you argue that this is something less "bad" than someone who kills someone else intentionally? I would even say, if their reasoning abilites were really completely turned off, they are "innocent". They weren't aware of what they were doing. You can find such interesting examples in criminology, or psychiatry in general, think of lobotomy for example. More common are negligent homicides. Someone does not look on the street while driving, a car crash happens, someone dies. It was "bad" that the driver did not look on the street. But it would've been way worse if they really wanted to kill someone. Intentions matter a lot, highlighting the importance of moral agency. However, if the driver in our example had a disease like narcolepsy (and wasn't aware of that prior to driving) and suddenly fell asleep which then leads to the deadly car crash, then they would be innocent again from my point of view, since they didn't kill someone willingly, nor was it rooted in negligence. It was simply an unfortunate accident.

It seems to me that’s arbitrary. I don’t see enough reason as to why the line should be drawn on vertebrates.

I understand that. That's also one of the main reasons why I am not a vegan (yet), even though you find me defending veganism here a lot. The best counter argument I got so far is rooted in the fact that I am already distinguishing between different forms of life. To illustrate it with an extreme example: I would rather pick a flower than shoot a human. What would you do?
Given such an extreme and hypothetical example if you were given a choice to pick a flower or shoot a human, and you would have to decide for one of these options and don't have any other. Wouldn't you also rather pick the flower?

This has significant implications. Probably because of natural instincts, I value the life of humans much higher than the ones of plants. Therefore I have to accept that I already see a hierarchy of life forms with respect to their capacity to suffer. And I don't want to change my view of that hierachy. Vegans draw the line there, were more complex forms of suffering can begin, which are usually vertebrates. Simpler forms of life, whose capacity to suffer is reduced to mere reflexes (like the light seeking plant), can be ethically consumed. However, some vegans I've got to know so far would prefer nutrients snythesized from lifeless matter. Since that is not a realistic option right now, not consuming animal products, and plant- / non-animal-based products instead, is the best they can currently do.

I would prefer such synthesized products as well. But to be honest, I am currently still struggling whether I really want to accept that hierarchy as is and I am questioning myself whether it is "good" or "bad" that I also value the life of humans much higher than others. I need to justify somehow what forms of life I destroy in order to live myself. Veganism seems to provide the best logical construct for that, as I haven't been in contact with better alternatives yet.

Maybe I interpreted it wrong… but seeing that the meme was not enough of an answer for me (and on top of that, it appealed to emotion), I saw it as an opportunity to engage in some conversation which I hoped would not be unwelcome.

I see. Yeah, I think maybe you interpreted it a bit wrong. However, any civil discussions on that topic - and I take the liberty to say that for the community here - are of course most welcome.

I also need to thank you for our discussion here. Even though we disagree on some key aspects, this motivated me to dive deeper into the topic of "true randomness" and related topics. This has yielded some life changing results for me, even though it led me to a minor existential crisis, haha. :D

It seems my reply got so long that lemmy won't let me post it completely. So you'll get it in parts.

Part 1 of 2:

Have I missed it? …as I said before, emotions are needed but only as a basis. And I believe you agreed on that.

I just wanted to explain why I said, what I said. You questioned Veganisms from a nihilistic perspective in your original comment. And yes, at first it did not become clear what your standpoint with regard to the connection of emotion and ethics is. But since we cleared that up and agree on that we can move on.

Without using logic to distill morality, you’d get an animalistic set of morals as wild and clueless as our emotions often are… the same kind of morality that an animal, like the wolf, would have, because that’s all it has: instint / emotion

You are again attributing moral as something which can exist without the capability of reasoning about it, i.e., purely instinctual and emotionally driven behaviour is already something which you understand as morality. This is a fundamental disagreement we seem to have with regard to the definition of moral. You observed this as well and provided your definition. I will deal with that later.

I say that moral can only be an attribute of a being which is capable of higher reasoning. If a being is not able to even have such labels as "right" or "wrong" and not able to attribute them to its actions, then it can not have moral. A wolf acts instinctively, as I have detailed before. That's why it's not a moral agent and can't act morally "good" or "bad". Those are labels we put on the wolves since we have moral agency.

based on our current understanding, humans might not even have any real “agency” themselves. That’s something that scientists and philosophers have been discussing for ages without reaching any sort of agreement… many think that “free will” is just an illusion. [...]
I wonder what’s you position about “determinism”. I’m not sure how would you reconcile it with your idea of morality, which seems to require the need for agency.

I don’t believe in free will. But my take on morality does not require it.

The illusion of free will, yes. I am well aware of that. There have been studies which show that we already have a decision for an action before we become aware of it. It makes sense that we could predict the actions of someone before they are becoming aware of it, if we have a detailed view of their neural circuitry. We could simulate the exchange of electrochemical signals, which are again rooted in external and internal inputs, like sensory information. There is a clear cause and effect visible on a macroscopic scale. If we could create a very well controlled environment we could even make some guarantees about our predictions.

(This will now get abstract for a while, but bear with me, you'll see how this will become relevant.)

However, no environment is currently perfectly controllable. And it is not even possible in theory. Are you familiar with Laplace's demon? If not, here is a short summary: Laplace's demon is basically the idea that there could exist a being, which is able to perfectly predict the future state of each and every particle in the whole universe, as well as to determine its past. It is the ultimate culmination of determinism and also illustrates the illusion of free will. Because, if we can simulate the interaction of each and every particle in the whole universe, given the knowledge about their current state, we basically know beforehand what decisions humans will make. If we would construct a machine which resembles Laplace's demon, then this machine could even be able to predict it's own predictions, which would lead to an interesting paradox.

But, as far as I know, our current understanding of the universe does not allow Laplace's demon to exist. One of the major problems is the exchange speed of information. Einstein disullisoned us of that when he found out that there can be nothing faster than the speed of light. This includes the speed of communication. Laplace's demon can't exist, because it is not able to know the current state of particles which are lightyears away from it. It can't even perfectly know the current state of particles which are one centimeter away from it, since it only sees a shadow of it, which was casted a very brief moment before.
There are more reasons why such a demon can not exist. For the sake of not making my response excessively longer than it already is, I omit them, but I will highlight another important one:
True randomness. Given our current knowledge, true randomness exists on a quantum level. If you would like to know more about that, I refer you to Heisenberg's unvertainty principle. Even though deterministic interpretations like the de Broglie-Bohm theory exist (or the Many-Worlds-Interpretation, which I reject for now for a lack of evidence of parallel universes), those and other hidden variable theories have been deeply challenged by the findings for which three physicists were are awarded a nobel prize last year. Those basically proved that our universe is not locally real. (Here are two resources to wrap your head around it: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-universe-is-not-locally-real-and-the-physics-nobel-prize-winners-proved-it/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txlCvCSefYQ )

So either it is real or local or none of them, but it can't be both, if I understood that correctly. This again underlines the existence of true randomness on a quantum scale.

If we have true randomness, our universe is not deterministic, at least not entirely, meaning it is probalistic. Even though we have a certain degree of determinism on a macroscopic scale (which under the hood is just a manifesation of a high probability in that view), those processes are influenced by quantum processes which are random in nature.

Consequently, Laplace's demon can't exist. Furthermore, the existence of true randomness, allows room for the existence of free will. Even though "free will" is the high level product of some neural circuitry, it is very difficult to perfectly predict this product as this neural circuitry in turn is again influenced by truly random processes. That doesn't mean we can make high probability predictions, but we can't do it perfectly. And that's the critical point here.

If we have free will, this supports that we have moral agency. We can evaluate whether some action is right or wrong. We can differentiate between good and bad and act to that accordingly.