[Jack Simth]

Fyron: The possibility you site is not, in and of itself, an assumption, but your method of getting there and analyisis of it has underlying "feels-right" assumptions:

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
here are the basics of an example: if it directly or indirectly harms another person other than yourself, it is immoral. If it doesn't, it is not immoral. Being "moral" does not specifcally matter, as most actions that are obviously not immoral are not necessarily morally good.

Assumes other people are fundamentally important (and presupposes some assumed definition of person); without that assumption, harming another would be no more wrong than killing a potato plant to eat the potatos.

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Here is another one: if it infringes upon the freedoms (freedom to live, freedom to be happy, freedom to better him/herself, etc.) of another individual, it is immoral. If not, it is not immoral. Again, being "moral" is not a big concern, for the same reason as above.

Same basic underlying assumption as the Last, with an addition of freedom being a feature it is fundamentally right for others to have. Moreover, there is an additional underlying assumption of what freedoms are(n't) to be included on the list - I doubt very much, for example, that you would include the freedom to take things from people in there.

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:

Neither of these rely on "feel-right" assumptions.

Sure they do - the "feel-right" assumptions simply aren't stated in them.

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
They can be arrived from from the fact that harming others tends to destablize society in general, so it is better to not harm others than to harm them. If society becomes destablized too much, you might end up getting killed. This is not an assumption, but an observation of human societies.

Ah, but to go from your "source data" to the conclusions above requires a "feels-right" assumption: personal consequences are fundamentally important in ethical considerations. Also, without the other underlying assumptions I listed earlier for your conclusions, you can only arrive at a "for the most part" conclusion from the data and "personal consequences are important" assumption; specific cases may very well be otherwise. E.g., under social stability is important because of personal consequences, a buisness mogul might find it acceptable to murder someone to prevent certain business pratices of his from coming to light, if such a happenstance would financially crush the mogul - the risk of the mogul getting harmed from the societal instibility generated by the murder being considerably less than the highly-probably consequences of letting the person bring those practices to light, with ensuing loss of the mogul's financial standing.

Every ethical system ultimately has one or more "feels-right" assumptions lying under it somewhere (although some will be disguised as circular logic, "what else could it be?" defenses, or others).