Oh, dear.
1. Agreeing that we're trying to figure out what the relavent norms are won't tell us anything about the content of those norms. That's what seems to be at issue here, though.
2. Spouting someone's principles isn't going to establish that those principles get things right, or that the person you're citing is correct. Moreover, "justice" can have any number of different and incompatible interpretations. Beneficence seems not to be a criterion of minimal decency (see my post above from a minute ago). Fidelity seems irrelevant.
3. Utilitarianism is not opposed to the use of principles. Adherence to principles presupposes a substantive account of morality that might be utilitarian or might be non-utilitarian. There's an argument to be had here - that's what normative ethics is, at least partly, about. (I take "normative ethics" to be distinct from metaethics, which deals with values fit into the world, and applied ethics, which is about the application of principles. Normative ethics is about what those principles ought to be.)
4. I don't see what utilitarianism has to do with sociology, any more than it has anything to do with chemistry. (Except that chemistry says interesting things...)
5. Being non-utilitarain is not the same as being immoral. I'm anti-utilitarian by instinct - for the record, I'm somewhere between Aristotle and Kant. I think that utilitarianism gets morality wrong. But, whatever one thinks along these lines, there's an argument to be had, and a position to defend. A normative ethical claim has no substance: it's no more moral or immoral than is a claim in the natural sciences.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 24 Dec 2008, 10:53, 1 reply)

I'm not
sure the 'oh dear' is in order.

You continually ask what morals are and where they are defined. I gave you an answer as to where people have attempted to define morals and ethics.

You, in turn have not given me any reason to doubt their reasoning, but at least I have attempted to give you a definitive answer.

Fidelity may well be irrelevent in this arguement, however, I'm pretty sure that the three as defined by whomever it was, were not mutually exclusive.

In short, having morals IS the difference between right and wrong, and what that society as a whole believes right and wrong to be.
(dchurch bah, Wed 24 Dec 2008, 11:01, closed)

But...
An attempt to define a moral code isn't the same as doing so successfully. The principles you've outlined here strike me as woefully inadequate. There doesn't seem to be any reasoning to doubt.

And you're just wrong about societal beliefs being the final word on matters of right and wrong, as I pointed out above. There's no way at all that that claim could be correct.


Right. I'm going home. My freelance consultancy fee is about £170 an hour, by the way. I might set up a PayPal account on the way out...

:)
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 24 Dec 2008, 11:06, closed)

Ahh
like most consultants - charge a hefty price for providing big words and very little sustance.

;-)
(dchurch bah, Wed 24 Dec 2008, 11:10, closed)

*splutters*
I'm happy to talk substance once the ground as been cleared.

I'm still trying to get rid of the rubble.


And I don't get much freelance work. :(
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 24 Dec 2008, 11:14, closed)

Ha
you know I'm only jesting, right?

;-)
(dchurch bah, Wed 24 Dec 2008, 11:26, closed)