The pain of wrong-doing, cont.

I'm sorry, but I guess I'm not following you. To my way of thinking, your analogy with pain actually serves to illustrate my point.

As you say, there's probably not an objective way to measure pain. And yet somehow, even if we haven't personally experienced pain, we know it exists.

Prior to this, you said actions can't possibly be "morally right" or "morally wrong," because there's no way to measure them. Now it sounds like you're saying something entirely different:

"Is there an objective, independent standard of pain?...I think you would probably agree with me that there isn't. But you know when something hurts! When I think of genocide, it hurts even to think of it. I hear other describe a similar pain."

Aren't you contradicting yourself?

Let me ask again. If one believes there are no real, objective standards by which to judge actions -- moral actions, if you will -- upon what basis would you condemn this statement:

"We can rightly say that we believe passionately genocide is right, because of the pleasure we feel thinking about it because of our moral sense."

I'm not asking you to approve of genocide, Steve. I'm simply asking you to give me a definite answer, one way or another, to my question.

I'll be happy to give you, in my own feeble way, my answer to this and any other follow-up questions you have. But I would really, really appreciate it if you could just give me a straight answer.