Pain of wrong-doing - more explanation

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.

Ah, but we don't know what it is like. We don't know it feels bad. It is a concept with no associations.

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:

No. Sorry, I may not have made myself clear. I said actions can't be objectively morally right or morally wrong because there's no way to objectively measure these qualities. However, we can subjectively measure them, because of our feelings and understanding.

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.

I am a little confused, because I thought I had.

I can condemn unethical acts by saying "I believe that those acts are wrong by the standards I have learned and understood, in combination with my conscience and my ability to empathise".

What I can't do is say "I believe those acts are wrong by some universal objective standard of how wrong certain acts are", because I have no idea of any foundation on which to base such a statement. There is no universally accepted book, or stone tablet, or sign in the sky that say "this act is wrong" (and even if there where, how do I know those are telling the truth?)

But I will condemn acts that I consider evil. (In fact, I not only do condemn them, I actively support charties that campaign against abuses of human rights and torture).

I think that is the best I can do. I can go into more detail about how I believe my conscience and empathy works, with a discussion of the evolution of altruism, and the operation of empathy-inducing "mirror" brain cells...