“Normative” ethical theories

[The Grand Nudger]

You and I still very much disagree re realism in the works of Morris. It comes down to our definitions here, what you consider realism I consider to just be assertions about natural facts

This is also what natural realism sees valid moral statements to be.  Likewise, to get in front of a likely follow up question, the "normative force" in realist translation is the same as our expectations of a rational being confronted with accurate statements in valid inferences.  

with no moral veneer that can be true or false applicable to them.

If you look for an additional veneer before you decide something is "realist" then perhaps this is why you do not recognize realist content or conceit when it presents itself.  

I will try to find some specific quotes on this, but it seems like we are in the biology vs intelligent design semantics game here where the biologist says “the eye is designed to see”, the ID person says “he says design, that is ID terminology so he is really a believer in intelligent design” and the biologist saying “nope, I use that term in a specific way”. Neither of us would accept the ID proponent come back that the biologist’s language is like theirs and therefore this is just ID at base.

I go the other way with it, and have recently on the boards...but yeah, in principle I'm a-okay making such statements.  In general, the only difference between a psuedoscientific ider and a biologist, is that one of them thinks a god did it.  It becomes pretty clear they're talking about the same process. There's actually a term for this.  A stolen concept fallacy.  Employing a concept while simultaneously denying the logical and hierarchal validity upon which that concept depends.  

Long story short, id is evolutionary biology with a beard.  Often literally......

Your penultimate paragraph is an interesting one. Good that we have some level common ground on the thread. For what it is worth regardless of any disagreements, it has been a useful discussion for me

Given that Stanford page covers a lot of ground. What part of it do you feel applies best to your position? Maybe we can start there?

My position on whether a moral argument for moral abolitionism can succeed or in general? For the former, it seems self explanatory. For the latter..that I;m a realist is just an acknowledgement that I apprehend realist semantics and argumentation to be accurate and compelling. They may be wrong in-fact but that does not change my experience of them. That said, I also find that countervailing metaethics, moral skepticism, and error theory all make valid points and highlight difficulties in principle, and even more often difficulties in practice, that could confound a moral agent regardless of their being a moral truth and access to it. You know the saying that math is perfect, but people aren't? You run into the effects in woodworking and manufacturing pretty often. On paper everything lines up. IRL there are gaps, nearly imperceptible misalignments, bending and twisting and unexpected issues. The same is true of ideologies and systems in-practice. Knowing right from wrong (or believing that you do) may not be or even seem to be incredibly helpful if all you have to choose from are wrongs or not rights. When you have an idea of how things should go and should fit but nothing actually will or does. Exclusively suboptimal decision fields. I think that's one of the main factors involved when we lapse into intuitionism, emotivism, subjectivity, or even relativity. For us, timely answers may be more fit than accurate ones. If we consider the neurological basis for moral decisionmaking and specifically when we are prompted to make objective judgements it's pretty clear that we're trying to limit those error potentials...but...ofc..we routinely fail.

If and when I find myself in that position then I start to defer to those basis. If I can't really decide then I'll weigh my closest relatives interests and perceptions, my society's, go with my gut..or flat out flip a coin.

-as for where to start, i mean, right at the start I'd suspect. In what way is the statement that murder is bad different from the statement that nyx is a black cat?