With all due respect, I don't think that your example is related to ethics at all. It's related to the communication dynamics between parent and child, including the emphasis placed by the parent, and the age and cognitive development of the child. Your example changes if the child is 2 years old versus 10 years old; or if the parental admonition is different. And since avoidance of acute physical pain is an essentially universal human priority, how is this an ethical recommendation by the parent?

And last I checked ethics is the science of morals; the department of study concerned with the principles of human duty.

And in this scenario though once again variables can be added what is the root of the decision made by the child?

This may not be related to ethics, but it is entirely relevant to morality.

This brings me to an interesting point; are primal instincts innately evil? I think that consumption and desire are innately evil - one can draw an analogy between desire/consumption and fire: fire consumes all it can then dies, utterly selfish; in my opinion this is innate evil. Primal instincts teach us to explore all we can, consume what we want to and act in a way which contravenes ethically based societal values - just like fire.

I think essentially that the examples of the non-evil you have given do originate in evil.

I think essentially that the examples of the non-evil you have given do originate in evil, and that they are also a system that protects us from becoming either more evil or the victim of evil, so in any case they are relevant to evil in some way.

Like I said, all primal instincts originate in evil in some way or other.

It is impossible for a universally accepted concept to be subjective. What makes people moral is always the same thing expressed differently, and it is not something different, to say subjective, expressed the same. We all have a different perspective on the same phenomena. It is not subjective, and anything but. It is based, Morality is founded upon, made from, however you wish to express it, on the love a child first feels for his mother. From one person, and from one relationship we learn to think beyond ourselves, to have an expansive moral consciousness, to see ourselves in others, and to recognize our welfare in theirs. We do not wish morality to have a better life for them; but to have a better life for all, and this we cannot have while people have no moral compass pointing always home.

I disagree. Just because humanity shares a very similar moral framework, does not mean that the universally accepted (seemingly universally accepted) moral concepts within each individual cannot be subjective.

I believe that you share my opinion on this issue, and that this argument is coming out of our differing understanding of essentially the same principle.

I disagree. Just because humanity shares a very similar moral framework, does not mean that the universally accepted (seemingly universally accepted) moral concepts within each individual cannot be subjective.

I believe that you share my opinion on this issue, and that this argument is coming out of our differing understanding of essentially the same principle.

Truthfully anything can be subjective with regard to morals in the sense that any of us can make a (sometimes seemingly) immoral choice without being stopped or contained by someone else. For instance I can make the choice to stab someone repeatedly with a cleaver and kill them without being held back by someone else. Morality is not universally objective, but only in context of choice to carry out an immoral act.

Now yes I will say there are some moral issues like abortion and same sex marriage which are completely subjective. But it's because there's nothing about them that's as clear cut.

On the other hand, what makes murder and rape so immoral is that the person who commits those acts is taking advantage of their victim's vulnurability and are basically taking their victim's fate into their own hands. To follow through with such an act does require a sort of sadistic mentality, someone who gets their psychological jollies off of having control over someone else. This is especially true with rape.

This is why something like say murder is inherently immoral and has been throughout virtually all walks of history and all cultures. Morality is just like anything else in life: some things are universally objective like murder and rape, somethings are subjective like abortion and same sex marriage. To generalize by saying morality is all objective or all subjective is logically and practically incorrect.

You know; I don't think we have moral frameworks, or moral systems or any of that claptrap. We have morality as a concept, and law as a construct; and each of these are forms of relationship. But it is only people who can be moral, more moral or less moral. Each does according to his feelings of what is right, and what is moral. And well meaning people try to construct forms like law, or government, or religion to help achieve good and ward off evil. Laws are only as good as they are moral. Governments are only as good as they are moral. We build forms to produce a certain condition, but if the forms are not motivated by morality, immorality is produced.

When you look at certain behaviors of human kind having the purpose of giving people meaning and ensuring their survival, their experience of the behavior can hardly be called subjective. We all age, and all know age. Is the experience subjective? We all know life, and for the living, life appears phenomenal, and yet for all, life is all, all they will have of meaning, and all they will ever have of conscious reality, so is it really subjective; or is it the most objective of realities, our common quality, -time?

So forms, for which I presume a moral purpose, are universal, like life itself, and so, is very objective. To make it difficult: All forms are the same, and all of humanity relates through its forms. But all relationships are different, so we can share a form with all of humanity, but have every relationship within the forms of necessity, different, unique, and experienced subjectively by all.