Sprinkling the odd Latin phrase into your diatribe does not make it any more correct. The above was not particularly difficult to understand (for those happy with polysyllabic words), does not require translation, and was not an attack of any sort. If you think one can have ethics without having morality - essentially, right and wrong - I fear you may have misunderstood the term. And being as you brought it up, where do you imagine ethics/morals come from, if not concensus? Is there a metaphysical yardstick by which we can tell right from wrong? Where is this false dichotomy to which you refer?

Ad hominem, indeed. I've done nothing other than argue for people's right to believe in and live by whatever set of rules they choose - how can you possibly think that conceive of the above as an attack, ad hominem or otherwise? Do you imagine, for one moment, that I'm arguing against the concept of morality? No, no - an ad hominem attack would be something more clear cut - such as an ill-conceived assertion that I had only half a brain, starting your reply with 'hahaha' and implying a perfectly-readable comment required translation, or similar.
( Happy Phantom has been to Hastings, Brighton, and Eastbourne too, Sun 15 Aug 2010, 10:36, 1 reply)

I'm beginning to wonder whether I can be arsed with this any more, to be frank...
Ethics concerns itself with right and wrong, of course: but it's not reducible to statements about right and wrong. It's to do with a more general inquiry into how we think about right and wrong, how we should act, how we should live, and so on. Aristotle managed without talking about right and wrong in the modern sense - that's a comparatively modern addition.

As to the false dichotomy: there's plenty of ways that you can get to a version of morality without god or consensus. Kant did it one way. Mill did it another way. There's a huge tradition of metaethics - moral realism and quasi-realism, for example - holding that morality can be naturalised. Granted, realism is a bit unfashionable at the moment, but it's not laughable; quasi-realism is taken very seriously by a good many people.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Sun 15 Aug 2010, 18:37, closed)

Right - you're a lecturer in (bio)ethics, so you obviously have a fair degree of familiarty with the subject. I am really trying to understand this. If you've bailed on the thread, fair enough - but I'm still not getting how morality can exist without concensus, given that it's certainly and demonstrably not defined on the level of the individual.

It seems, from above, that you dislike the term 'transcendental' - so I shall stick with 'external'. Is there an external right, or wrong, by which we can be judged? I'm going to procede on the assumption that there's not, as the alternative would involve invoking Him Upstairs. Therefore, as I understand things, morality is a human conceit - not a part of nature, and not supernatural. We all know in our hearts what is good, what is bad - where did this knowledge come from? Why does it seem oddly-specific to the society we grew up in?

No one person can define his own morality. He can't say - 'On balance, I have decided that X is good!" - if X happens to be something like 'only killing people who look at me funny', most societies will deem him to be a cunt. However worthy the thought process that led him to this point, he's going to be forever known as a wrong 'un, becuase he's done something society deems to be morally bankrupt. His personal morality is an irrelevence, and barely deserves the label; it's the wisdom of the masses that decides and judges such things.

Surely, morality cannot exist without concensus. Individually, it's merely an idiosynchracy.
( Happy Phantom has been to Hastings, Brighton, and Eastbourne too, Mon 16 Aug 2010, 2:20, closed)