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ORIGINAL: Jhud
A common moral principle understood and articulated in the Western culture is 'all men are created equal'. That is a basic principle underlying certain precepts laws in our society. Now it is important to note this principle is in and of itself not 'provable' - one cannot derive it via empirical means or objective observations, but this does not render it a 'subjective' measure.

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We can see that such a statement is wholly unsupportable in that one can neither derive principles, precepts, nor laws from one's personal inclinations.

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Of course it does. Our adoption of this principle is done entirely by choice, even if the consequences follow unambiguously (which they don't).

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I have no need to derive them from first principles. Besides, you already (correctly) stated that principles can't be derived. What I can do, when faced by a principle, is choose to accept or reject it. Why do I choose one over another? There may be many reasons, but I know that one thing I don't do is to hold the principle up to some absolute rulerstick of morality. Since I haven't got one.

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ORIGINAL: essentialsaltes

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ORIGINAL: zamdad

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For me, the buck stops with me.

And when your buck collides with the collective bucks of others?

Then I lose, at least as far as the law is concerned. If it's not very important, I grumble. If it's more important, I help out with efforts to educate and/or overturn the status quo. If it's still more important, I engage in civil disobedience.

It's no different than what, say, pro-life people do with respect to legal abortion.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

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Of course it does. Our adoption of this principle is done entirely by choice, even if the consequences follow unambiguously (which they don't).

Exactly; the fact that we can either choose to accept or reject the objective moral prinicple does nothing to diminish it's absolute nature.

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ORIGINAL: Bluethread
You appear to be saying that personal morality is subjective and arbitrary. You also seem to be saying that the law is nothing but the majority agreement on these subjective and arbitrary views. If that is the case then what sense does it make to insist that our laws not be arbitrary and capricious, since all laws are arbitrary and capricious.

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Riiiight. And we can choose to accept or reject the principle "All men are NOT created equal." And our acceptance or rejection of that principle does nothing to diminish its absolute nature.
So both "All men are NOT created equal" and "All men are NOT created equal" are 'absolute' statements.
I don't think this is the absolute you're looking for.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

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Riiiight. And we can choose to accept or reject the principle "All men are NOT created equal." And our acceptance or rejection of that principle does nothing to diminish its absolute nature.
So both "All men are NOT created equal" and "All men are NOT created equal" are 'absolute' statements.
I don't think this is the absolute you're looking for.

Your acceptance or rejection of a moral principle has no more bearing on it's the truth of it than your acceptance or rejection of a mathematical principle has on it's objective reality.

Do you really think that your unwillingness to accept the idea that "Things which are equal to the same thing are also equal to one another" would render it untrue?

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Mathematics is an interesting comparison. Mathematics is built on postulates that are assumed without proof as being reasonable, perhaps like the prohibition against murder. However, one can either accept or reject Euclid's Fifth postulate and one can still develop valid mathematics in either case: Euclidean or non-Euclidean geometry. The fifth postulate is neither true nor false; it is simply a matter of choice.
Similarly, in mathematics the Axiom of Choice and the Continuum Hypothesis can both be accepted or denied, and consistent mathematics will result from either choice.
Perhaps moral structures can also be constructed in a similar fashion. Some principles are reasonable (but unproven), while others are simply a matter of choice. Denying a=b=c -> a=c would probably yield unfruitful mathematics, just as denying that murder is wrong would yield unfruitful morality.

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I would say wrong morality yields bad precepts, laws, and ultimately a dysfunctional society.

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Veritas
Murder is not cut-and-dried. There is agreement that murder is wrong, but there is not agreement as to whether an act is murder. Is killing a condemned man murder? Yes, if you're a fellow prisoner; no, if you're the state executioner. Is abortion murder? Not according to the law, but some people think it is. There was a case in Texas where a man killed his wife and her lover. It was decided that it was a crime of passion, and he was not punished.

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ORIGINAL: essentialsaltes

Subjective is not quite the same as arbitrary and capricious. Our moral ideas are certainly influenced by experience and other factors of human nature.

Similarly, our sense of aesthetics in art is subjective, but that doesn't mean that it's arbitrary. I doubt you would find people voted 50/50 for Jackson Pollock and Michelangelo as the better artist.
Possibly someone raised on a steady diet of abstract art would prefer Pollock, but I expect she would be in a minority.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And so, I claim, is morality. It appears that most people have fairly similar 'eyes' for morality when it comes to murder, theft, etc. But as we explore the edges (abortion, bikinis, etc.), things start to look a lot more like 'personal taste'.

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ORIGINAL: Bluethread
Your argument may hold for arbitrary, but "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." is a perfect example of capriciousness. That is why I would say the Supreme Courts ruling regarding pornography as "I know it when I see it." did not stand the test of time.

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the average person, applying contemporary community standards (not national standards, as some prior tests required), must find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest;
the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by applicable state law; and
the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

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Do you believe that just laws are capricious and the long held legal principle is wrong or do you believe there should be some underlying evidence and/or logic to just laws?

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ORIGINAL: essentialsaltes

Do you realize what they replaced it with? Now it's "I know it when they see it." If anything, the law is more subjective. In Miller v California, the court set out its new guidelines for obscenity, all three of which must be met for something to be obscene:

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the average person, applying contemporary community standards (not national standards, as some prior tests required), must find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest;
the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by applicable state law; and
the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

The first prong explicitly ties obscenity to the standards of the particular community in which the case arises. So something could be obscene in one state, but not another.
The second prong does not define "patently offensive." Who decides what is or isn't offensive, and whether it does so patently? Possibly it is defined by the specific state laws, which again will vary from state to state, rather than measuring up to some absolute standard.
The final prong requires that the work have no serious value. How is the value of a work decided objectively?

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I'm not sure I understand your question. Could you rephrase it?

Certainly I think that rational, logical, emotional, and pragmatic factors can help us to choose moral principles and create useful laws based on them.