Good and Evil

[Hatshepsut]

... We had Zeno's paradox of the arrow arguing that motion or change can't be real...

It should serve as a warning for trusting an abstract argument too much and not paying attention to counter-evidence that is readily available.  The error of Zeno's reasoning is explained in Calculus, but even without the explanation, it should be clear enough that he made a mistake somewhere, even if one does not know what the mistake is.

As taught to me, the explanation in calculus was that the sequence {1/2, 3/4, ... (2^n - 1)/2^n} has a limit point at 1. None of the sequence's elements themselves are equal to 1; there's apparently no motion involved with constructing limits in calculus, a form of math as stationary as geometry, which can nonetheless describe rates of change. I wonder if Zeno's mistake was to assume that a thing is "real" only if it admits of formulation with a finite number of discrete steps. Natural language, which has a finite vocabulary and grammar, forces us to do the latter for everything we want to describe.

I feel like it's completely pointless to even attempt a discussion about morality if we concede that it has no basis in reason...

Yet is it possible to observe that, even if morality represents shared preference rather than a thing emerging from logical necessity, it still makes use of reason? Stanford Plato states that in ethics one deals with propositions that are "true" only most of the time, a significant concession in terms of rigor. A system of value statements, taken together, can still have deducible logical consequences.

These consequences become a matter for discussion, especially in the event it's found they go contrary to one or more of the original values whose realization was sought in the system. For instance, measures to promote social equality can paradoxically work to undermine it, as we see in the conflict between individual rights and cultural rights. For instance, certain groups have a custom of cutting deep scars on their members as a way of marking them, and this is done whether that member consents or not. Yet to forbid the practice in honor of individual liberty denies the right of that group to self-determination. They may not treasure individual freedoms as much as we do, and will argue that we have no right to impose this value on their society.

Yes, people have feelings, but feelings are not knowledge.

This a contestable premise. Are things that people learn through their sense organs knowledge? If not, then we don't know much. Another post has already pointed out that the brain computes emotional states in response to information coming in from the body and from the outside world, effectively making the emotional system a sense organ as well. Fear usually alerts an animal that it may be in danger.

A partition between logos and pathos goes back to Aristotle's rhetoric and yet, while intuitively obvious, is somewhat artificial. Emotions don't arrive at random; they have causes and evolve according to predictable laws. Psychology studies such laws and uses them in the clinic. The sense of fairness in chimps (thanks for the links to it) isn't totally divorced from reason. That chimps and humans value self cannot be a cosmic requirement, yet it is prerequisite to our continued existence. (If we are extinct no one will be discussing morality.) The "fairness" settlements of chimps are "designed" to reconcile conflicts within their troops that could negatively impact survival of each chimp that belongs to such a group. In a fairness settlement, one "purchases" safety at the price of "agreeing" to consider others' needs in addition to one's own. The chimps may not understand exactly what they're doing in process, yet their lack of metaknowledge doesn't impede their calculations.

Practical knowledge, the ability to compute or to do something, should be distinguished from knowledge about the computational process. Children learn to speak grammatical English with no formal grammar instruction. They know nothing about how English works, subject & predicate and so on. This doesn't keep them from using English effectively.

None of which establishes that feelings can generate an "objective" morality, a thing that probably doesn't exist. Some value statements must be agreed on when starting a moral system; then the consequences of those statements can be explored using reason.