Umm, no. Godwin's Law aside, what is so hard understanding what I'm saying?
Argumentum ad hominem. Well played.
First, on the topic of social construction: I am not making a normative value judgment. Social construction is not an ethical position. It is an ontological paradigm that informs certain schools of social science. You are all trying to talk ethics. I'm talking sociology and anthropology. An anthropologist who writes an ethnography on a group of people and how they negotiate certain folkways, ethics, and norms within a group is not necessarily making a value judgment on those things; he or she is just reporting how that group negotiates those folkways, ethics, and norms. If you remember correctly, the original question I responded to asked how different ideas of right and wrong change over time. I gave a quick and dirty guide to constructionism; nothing more.
Wrong. The discussion was over whether there was such a thing as inherent morality. You denied that there was. You had said,
What is inherent morality? Morality is given validity through our system of philosophy. I reject the idea of an inherent morality because it assumes some sort of intangible essence.
Second, with regard to my second point. I'm not saying morality comes from consensus.
You're not? You said, "Morality is given validity through our system of philosophy." Who is
our? Do you mean us collectively, or each one of us individually? If the first, then yes, you are saying that morality comes from consensus. If the second, then no, that's not what you were saying, and I "understandably misunderstood." But if you are saying that morality is wholly individualistic...the Holocaust did not necessarily violate the morals of the Nazis, and thus may have been a moral act for them.
I'm saying that morality is not automatically self-evident or based upon any inarticulable essence, but must be understood through a system of philosophy that is intellectually defensible.
Hitler used an intellectual defense for the Final Solution. Through Darwinian evolution and pragmatism, he argued that the annihilation of the Jews was for the good of Germany and, ultimately, of Europe and all the world. That is not to say that his defense isn't refutable, because it most definitely is. But that refutation depends on an understanding of a higher morality than any one individual's system of philosophy.
The Nuremberg Trials never would have convicted a single Nazi if they had not proceeded with the understanding that there was a higher, inherent, morality.
Anymore straw men I have to deal with in this thread?
Calling it so does not make it so. You are trying to address multiple subjects; I get that. But where I take issue with you is on your claim that there is no such thing as inherent morality. I say that there is, and the Nuremberg Trials agree with me and disagree with you.
). With that said, ethics aren't black and white, and we do renegotiate ethical concepts all of the time. Most people would agree that killing another person is wrong. However, killing an enemy combatant during a time of war is okay, which makes things dicey. 
