A bit off-topic, but not too much so, since one of the foundation ideas of morality is that of "responsibility". Here is something I recently wrote on that topic:
Responsibility is not additive. If you could have prevented something from being done to you by acting differently, then you are responsible for it happening to you. If someone did it to you against your will, they are also responsible for it happening to you. More generally, responsibility is how avoidable a particular result was, depending on a party’s actions; everyone participating is responsible to the extent that they could have prevented/avoided the result by acting otherwise. The extent of Party A’s responsibility has no relevance to the extent of Party B’s responsibility.
You should realize that most people don't hold themselves, or other people, morally responsible for everything they had the power to prevent.
I don't think anyone consistently acts according to your concept of moral responsibility. On the other hand, people say a great many things, and sometimes say what you do here.
The fascinating thing there is that Subhan implies that morality -is- a given, when he theorizes a species for whom given morality is different.
Morality doesn't need to be universal to be a given; it can apply to humans, and humans only. I find it obvious that there exist moral codes by which human beings cannot thrive (for a given value of thrive), and equally moral codes by which they can, again, for a given value of thrive.
I'm almost certain that this isn't the author's intent, but the inability to produce a good response to the criticisms seems like a strong argument for moral anti-realism. Or is Obert just holding the idiot ball?
Today's post, Is Morality Given? was originally published on 06 July 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
A dialogue on the idea that morality is an absolute external truth.
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Is Morality Preference?, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.