All I’m saying is that I believe that what morality actually is for each of us in our daily lives is a result of what worked for our ancestors, and that is all it is.
But if I understand you, you are saying that human morality is human and does not apply to all sentient beings. However, as long as all we are talking about and all we really deal with is humans, then there is no difference in practice between a morality that is specific to humans and a universal morality applicable to all sentient beings, and so the argument about universality seems academic, of no import at least until First Contact is achieved. In particular, a lot of moral non-realists are wrong. For example, those who think it is merely a matter of personal opinion are wrong. Those who think that it is relative to culture are wrong (at least for large chunks of it). Nihilists are wrong (insofar as they deny even the human-specific morality which you acknowledge). Those who think that democratic majorities define ‘morality’ are wrong. And so on.
As far as whether there are philosophical traditions which acknowledge or at least are compatible with the specificity of human morality to humans, I think there are. The natural law tradition ties law to morality and identifies a natural morality—a natural right and wrong. As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes it:
The precepts of the natural law are binding by nature: no beings could share our human nature yet fail to be bound by the precepts of the natural law.
This leaves open the possibility that alien intelligences do not share our human nature and so are not bound by the precepts of (human) natural law.
All I’m saying is that I believe that what morality actually is for each of us in our daily lives is a result of what worked for our ancestors, and that is all it is.
But if I understand you, you are saying that human morality is human and does not apply to all sentient beings. However, as long as all we are talking about and all we really deal with is humans, then there is no difference in practice between a morality that is specific to humans and a universal morality applicable to all sentient beings, and so the argument about universality seems academic, of no import at least until First Contact is achieved. In particular, a lot of moral non-realists are wrong. For example, those who think it is merely a matter of personal opinion are wrong. Those who think that it is relative to culture are wrong (at least for large chunks of it). Nihilists are wrong (insofar as they deny even the human-specific morality which you acknowledge). Those who think that democratic majorities define ‘morality’ are wrong. And so on.
As far as whether there are philosophical traditions which acknowledge or at least are compatible with the specificity of human morality to humans, I think there are. The natural law tradition ties law to morality and identifies a natural morality—a natural right and wrong. As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes it:
This leaves open the possibility that alien intelligences do not share our human nature and so are not bound by the precepts of (human) natural law.