Can we trust our Moral Intuitions?

[vulcanlogician]

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The next bit is counts a serious argument against the efficacy of moral intuitions. The norm box is empirically verified to influence emotional states. For example, you, as a young tribal boy go on the hunt with the men, and you see (for the first time in your life) that a woman has come along for the hunt. This causes an emotion in you (ie... this doesn't SEEM right... this isn't NORMAL... there is something WRONG with this...) and this in turn (solid line) affects your judgment.
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I'm guessing you meant "counts as"?  Or did you mean "discounts"?

Yeah bit of a typo there. I don't think Stich successfully "discounts" the efficacy of moral intuitions. I think the best he does is demonstrate that they are imperfect... prone to prejudice... susceptible to influence from cultural cues.

On my diagram I've included these "moral intuitions" or gut-feels (see the green lines on my diagram) because I think all organisms have this ability in various ways.  It's a very rudimentary stimulus-response system that we just happen to connect with words like 'emotion' and 'morals' and most likely has its origins in Centre of Gravity:
Lean too far and you'll fall out of the tree became stray too far from what the social group expects and pariahdom awaits you.

You are talking about the process in which mores and norms (including ethical norms) are impressed upon the individual. And, as far as I can tell, your model is accurate. You could also describe mathematical "norms" in this way. The 3rd grade student is told by the teacher that 4 divided by two equals 2. And when the student recalls this to the teacher in class, the teacher praises the student. That's all stimulus response.

But there is also a mathematical truth being conveyed. Does 4 divided by 2 really equal 2? Does the way that mathematical information conveyed in classrooms (stimulus/response) make mathematics subjective? Student seeks praise from teacher, therefore comes to "believe" 4 divided by 2 equals 2.

And this is the main reason for having different words for the different parts of the system.  Yes, nihilism is correct.  Yes, moral-alerts (intuitions) happen.  Yes, societies have developed ethics (standards of right/wrong).  Yes, individuals jump between different justifications (sometimes in the same sentence).

Societies have developed standards, yes. Some of them involve the welfare of people. Others work contrary to the welfare of people. A society may allow slavery. Another society may forbid it.

The question is, when we ask the question "How can I do good to another person?" can we come up with an objective answer? Can we run 4 divided by 2 equals X. Can we determine objectively that it is bad for a person to be enslaved, and good when a person is freed from slavery? I think we can.

Societies kind of suck at figuring this stuff out because they adhere to power structures. Some people have power. Others don't. Fact of life. Societies aren't the idealistic, orderly things we take them to be. They are ruthless at times, benevolent at other times. But societies don't just enact cruelty and benevolence. They impress these values upon members who participate via social means.

That doesn't mean we can't back away, look at a society objectively and determine if they are doing good or doing bad to the members within it.

Let's use 'ethics' for the 'standards of behaviour' and leave 'moral' as the first part. This removes part of the polysemantics issue.  

Right. I don't know if I can break the habit of using morals and ethics interchangeably, but either way, I mean ethics, as you define it, in all cases. Standards of behavior. But the definitions goes deeper than simply "what standards there are." We can talk about what standards there ought to be. What is good? Can the ethical standards we now have in our society be improved upon? Can we figure out good standards and recognize bad ones?

This would now mean that we can say that "morality is about how you live with yourself whereas ethics is about how you live with others".
Although having said that, ethics (unlike morals which can be reserved for the individual) is applicable at both the individual level and the community/organisational level.

One question concerning the ethical/moral division. This situation below involves individual ethics according to your schema, correct?

THOUGHT EXPERIMENT-
It's just you, a hot babe, some other dude on a desert island. Post apocalypse, everyone is sterile. There is no need for society, plenty of coconuts to go around.

You and hot babe have been getting along nicely. But suddenly, you notice her taking an interest in "other dude." You aren't sure if "other dude" is interested in return. Other dude seems like a nice chap. In no way a threat to either of you (except in that hot babe may like him more).

One day, you are walking up on the high cliffs with him, and an opportunity presents itself. You could push him off the cliff and not have to worry at all about hot babe's divided affections. You're certain that hot babe would buy the story that he fell, and you're also certain she'd be happy with just the two of you.

Does this dilemma REALLY relate to society in any way? There really is no real society (much less culture) between the three of you. With all the free coconuts around, no need for other dude's labor. So why not push him off? Well, if there is an objective way of seeing right and wrong, it wouldn't matter the social circumstances of pushing this fellow off a cliff. If you push him, any sensible person would say, "You have not done good to him." You have wronged him. Moral objectivists want to say that (once you care about doing right and wrong) objective answers to the question "Is it right to push this person off a cliff?" will emerge.

These values don't have to be absolutist. Maybe some circumstances would permit you pushing him... other circumstances may not. That's just variables being present in the equation. After all, the physics equation d=rt has variables. But once you know two of the variables, there is one objectively correct answer for the remaining variable.

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Which leads nicely to the basis of my diagram.  It's just a little something I put together based on a definition of 'culture' used in the best practice manuals:

Culture is simply the aggregate of individuals' behaviours.
Organisational Ethics determine the values by which the society (or enterprise) want to live (its code).
Individual Ethics are determined by each person’s personal values/principles and are dependent to some extent on external factors not always under the group's/society's control.
Individual Behaviours which collectively determine the culture of the society are dependent upon both organisational and individual ethics.

So I'm making a distinction between morality (the biologically evolved system for detecting significant 'moral' events) and ethics (the baseline of beliefs/rightness) with which an individual or group identifies.

Thus, culture acts as both an enabler and/or a constraint on both the developing and developed (maturing and mature) individual depending on how you look at it. 

And that's the main thrust of the flow diagram's boxes and yellow lines.  The green lines relate to the moral (or non-moral) alerts (see the Event Management diagram above).

The left side is a depiction of an individual.  I have a slide for 'all of evolution on a page' but I'm still working on a 1-pager for the development of an individual (to include the architecture, customisation and configuration of body schema, extended body schema, mind schema and extended mind schema). The GMO/OMG bit will be a separate diagram that help to explain why Virtue Ethics, Consequentialism, Duty Ethics etc. are all correct when seen as thinking tools rather than One System To Rule Them All.

So, to the tribal boy.  
(I'm imagining a MAGA hat kinda tribal but I guess that post-dates Stich's lecture)

Architecture has a couple of facets:
- The DNA building blocks
- The arrays that map e.g. actors and roles (e.g. men/women and food provider/nurturer).
Customisation is the early-life formation of the boy's principles and beliefs very much influenced by the environment in which he grows incl. phobias.  It's the development of the child's Baseline Comfort Zone (and discomfort, for that matter).
Configuration would include the plastic wiring of his neurons and perhaps his ability to get over the fear of tarantula or getting used to the idea that women can hunt.

So, Organisational Ethics would be the 'proximal cues' on Stich's diagram.

First sight of a woman hunter would be observation of someone else's Individual Behaviour (see pale purple rhomboid) that triggers an alert (see Event Management diagram).  

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Was that enough of an explanation or did I miss something?

I think your explanation works fine. Feel free to correct me where I might have misinterpreted things.

I think the main difference in our approaches is that your model (and Stich's) is descriptive. It explains 'why' and 'what' typical ethical judgments look like given the relation of ideas between societies and persons. (ie. What sort of things constitute ethics?... well, when you examine human behavior you have cultural norms x that influence judgments Y and behaviors Z. When describing how ethics work in societies, this model apprehends what is happening without error.)

My approach seeks prescriptive conclusions. (ie. if you care about doing right to another human being, and these are the circumstances, can you find an objective X that determines one action right and another wrong in those circumstances.) I think you've ruled out objective normative conclusions from the git-go and since you are starting with that premise, that premise expresses itself in your conclusions. I disagree with that premise.

PS: I got weary trying to hammer out this reply. Maybe a little sloppy at some parts. I think I might have tried too hard. Let's try to take things piece by piece from here, clarifying as we go.