Interesting thread, Revenant!
1. What is the aim of morality?
To include other people or things within the range of our consideration and sense of community when we make an action so that we would not do something bad to harm said community's wellbeing. I guess it is the prescriptive respect of another's intrinsic value so that the community in which we exist in thrives and maintains its integrity. The trick is to have an expansive enough view of your community (ie not just thinking about the wellbeing of you and your friend, but you, your friend, Person X whom you don't know, Person Z whom you don't necessarily like but still has some intrinsic value, etc, who are all interrelated) that your moral considerations balance out among everyone (not that I'm saying that's easy!). This is why favoritism doesn't work. It's a rough sketch of an idea I came up with on the spot, but I guess I'll have to work on it some more.
2. How are morality and ethics different?
Not a clue
3. Who would have the best take on whether something was moral or not? Linguists? Lawyers? Scientists? Philosophers? Religious leaders? Politicians? Someone else?
Philosophers. Not sure what linguists do exactly that's relevant to morality. Lawyers work with legal issues, but that's not an exact synonym for moral issues. Scientists describe and rarely prescribe.
Religious leaders (in this paragraph I'm admittedly dealing with Christian leaders in mind, because that's usually where people turn to where I'm from) are an interesting one because of the sophisticated reason that they DON'T have any real say on morality. It is true that religious texts have codes that link individuals to the rest of society, and many view that as the source of morality. But there is an argument that goes way back to the time of Sophocles (Aristotle? Plato?) about the limitations and, in fact, arbitrariness of that view. Although he was writing before the time Christianity took hold, he took a look at God (or a god, to be historically accurate) Himself and asked: Is an action moral because God says it is, or is what God says moral because he is guided by moral principles? In the case of the former, morality is reduced to arbitrariness. "Ah," you say. "But God would not say such things like Kill Your Neighbor." In that case, God is guided by moral principles, not the originator of morality; he is not omnipotent. If He is not the originator of moral principles, then one cannot reasonably say that the Bible or any other religious text, from which religious leaders draw their arguments, are necessarily moral because that is in fact drawing from either an arbitrary set of principles or from a secondary arbitrator of morality (in which case God's omnipotence is disproven along the way). That is, what is there is a conclusion but no argument. If there was an argument, that would be in the realm of philosophy.
Another argument is that religion is usually faith-based, not logic based (not that in some religions that is necessarily mutually exclusive).
I didn't lay this out in the best way, but Dr. Rachels in the Principles of Moral Philosophy (I think that's the title) deals with this in a much, much better way. I highly recommend reading that book, since he talks about this very specific question
Philosophers, on the other hand, always derive their arguments and conclusions from a very tight series of logical arguments, never from subjective arguments. They make sure their arguments necessarily lead up to their conclusions, like in a mathematical formula.
4. Is morality based on the intention or consequence of an action?
Since those are not necessarily mutually exclusive, it may be hard to tell, though I see where the question is coming from.
Good intention but poor consequence is usually a matter of faulty perception and knowledge. Bad intentions but good consequence is just a matter of luck. I see morality as based on neither exclusively, but the logical basis* of a course of actions to some consequence which may or may not have been already internalized (ie when we make a split-second decision to save a child from an incoming car, or when we make parental sacrifices for our child), so it's an a priori deduction of the consequences (in which intention is a little implicit).
*a very good argument goes against the purely logical nature of morality, but it's not really that relevant. Also there are always those things that we just FEEL are wrong, but perhaps the moral reasoning exists on a subconscious level...?
5. Absolute morals vs Relative morals?
When Hitler was killing the Jews, he saw that as the right thing to do. Of course, his premises were completely faulty, and he never really included the Jews in his perceived moral community (such as I described in the first question).
I think I remember a saying: "Is cannibalism just a matter of taste?"
I definitely don't see morality in relative sense (unless you were of course someone who believed in determinism, which I think is already a faulty philosophy), but other than that I don't know if I see it in the absolute moral sense or some gray area between that and relative.
6. When does ethics override someone's freedom of choice?
All the time. Biologically speaking, ethics are restrictions on one's freedom of choice because they make us unable to make unethical choice, if our moral principles that we follow hold true.
Sorry my arguments are a bit messy and I haven't thought of more counter-arguments to my argument to make it better, but I didn't have much time to think everything through. :relief:
