My requirements for someone's ethical opinions to be "valid" are that they don't criticize the field of ethics as useless. I guess that is a "requirement" I have, but it's a pretty nitpicking, useless distinction to make.

If someone criticizes the French language, but doesn't speak a word of French, sorry, but I don't have much respect for their opinion on French.

And no, I don't "assume they aren't well thought out," because many of these people have explicitly said philosophy is a waste of time.

I'm just having an intellectual argument with you, so thanks for sharing your thoughts.

In a non-theological world, the source of ethics can be anything - parents, community, study of ethhics. None of them is more valid than another - because requiring "a respect for the field of philosophy" is a ethical position in and of itself.

One of my best friends is a philosophy grad, and another is a very intelligent financier. What we've come to realize is that speaking and writing and making arguments is fruitless. You either have had the embodied experiences to recognize a statement is directionally correct -- to various magnitudes -- or you don't.

No amount of words will change that.

It is my experience -- after seeing the quality of thinking from those philosophically trained (I am not) -- that learning philosophy is learning how to think, and by extension figuring out for oneself what is capital g Good.

Morals and ethics are different and you conflate them. That is the crux of your confusion. Someone can understand morality inherently without ever thinking about it; but ethics requires actual intentional thought over years and years of reflecting on lived experience. What is good for you and your small circle can be grasped intuitively, but to grasp what is good "at scale" must be reasoned about. Without having seriously grappled with this, one is liable to have simplistic views, and in many cases hold views that have already been trodden through and whose "holes" have been exposed and new routes taken in unveiling ethics.

Without seriously having interfaced with it, it's like talking to someone about the exercise science when all they know is do steroids, lift weight, and eat. Sure, that works, but it lacks nuance and almost no thought has gone into it.

Anyway, this is tiring. Philosophical discussions are not something to do with strangers. It requires intimacy and is a deeply personal conversation one should have with those close to them and explore together.

> Someone can understand morality inherently without ever thinking about it;

How so? This would infer some universal set of morality, which doesn't exist.

> Anyway, this is tiring. Philosophical discussions are not something to do with strangers.

I think it's tiring because you view ethics and morality as a box that thinking has to happen in. But it's not. Ethics and morality can be anything (as we've seen through human history).