[lo_zamoyski]

The basic issue is that we have abandoned the basis for objective moral principles - human nature - and accepted bogus moral relativisms rooted in "consensus" or "my truth" (read: power). It is all too common and all too frustrating to hear someone get worked up about racism or bigotry or whatever else is the cause du jour[0], but when his favored vices come under the loupe, then all of a sudden he becomes a moral relativist. How convenient.

"Society" is not a basis for morality. Consent or consensus are not a basis for morality. "Society", which means every one of us, has a duty to obey objective moral principles and learn to apply them within the concrete situations that make up our lives. Man is not free to confect his own moralities to taste, because he does not confect his own nature.

So, the first thing we must do is accept the objectivity of moral principles. Without doing that, we would only be left to debate matters of taste.

[0] Before the rabid dogs commence their barking, allow me to say that I do maintain that racism and bigotry are immoral, but I have a sound basis for maintaining their evil, unlike the moral relativist with his vacuous emotional ranting.

[dec0dedab0de]

alright, I'll bite. What are these objective moral principles?

[largbae]

Do unto others as you would have done to you.

Or its simpler corollary: Don't do to others what you would _not_ want done to you.

Everything else derives from this.

[dec0dedab0de]

Ah the golden rule, classic, but it is so simplistic that it could encourage bad behavior. You can never assume that something you want or don't want applies to anyone else.

[panda-giddiness]

I think a better formulation is the so-called "platinum rule", i.e. to treat people as they want to treated (with the important qualification that you ∈ people). But even then it's not without issue (what if someone's wants are harmful to them, e.g. a child refusing to eat anything but candy?), and it's still a far cry from illuminating "objective moral principles" and fairly useless as a calculus for balancing different people's competing interests.

[lostmsu]

How about passing a job interview better than someone else?

[lo_zamoyski]

What is ethics? Practical philosophy: "how should one live?". Ethics studies the general nature of good behavior. It uncovers these principles and explains their basis. Neither you nor anybody really denies that there are good or bad actions or motivations. Go ahead. Tell me that racism or bigotry or murder or deliberately eating poison or a life of licentiousness or intentionally believing falsehoods are just "culturally constructed" as evil (never mind the question of how they could have been constructed in the first place; why these and not others?; ultimately you must appeal to the good). Even if you are a racist, you will either recognize the evil of it but remain racist regardless out of malice, or you will believe it to be a good thing that reflects the (ill-conceived) truth.

So what is the basis of the good? Why are certain actions evil? Because they conflict with human nature. Well-being is rooted in the actualization of potential and choosing in ways that do not intentionally frustrate the function of our faculties. Human beings are social animals. We need the social to grow and develop, and we are intrinsically social in that these are not merely transactional relations. We aren't atomized, asocial animals. We're also intellectual animals. The intellect is aimed at truth. Self-deception and lies impede the operation of the intellect. We suffer when the intellect is not aligned with truth, and even skeptics of truth are condemned to make truth claims. It is inescapable. Human nature gives us the normative basis. Without it, we couldn't even say whether a bodily organ is functioning properly. Disease becomes incomprehensible. There would be no objective way to claim that atherosclerosis is a problem. The notion of "heart failure" would be meaningless. Evil is the privation of the good as determined by human nature. And if good did not exist, then there is no reason to decide one way or another. Every decision is as meaningless as any other.

What you might have intuited is a presupposition that makes all of this comprehensible, namely, teleology. The only way you can measure good is in relation to a function. Metaphysical materialism is absolutely incoherent, but it is also morally nihilistic, because it denies telos. With time, we can no longer deny the reality of telos. In biology, we're seeing a return of the teleological, as you cannot explain organisms without it. (Indeed, without telos, you cannot even explain efficient causality, such as why striking a match reliably produces fire and not elephants or fire engines or even anything at all. The structure of a match is ordered toward the end effect of fire. In biological organisms, telos attains even greater importance.)