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, Reply)