It's not necessarily hypocrisy, but it leaves us with two sets of preferences for a single population, and a judgement call on which is the right one to follow. The argument you're making is sound on its face, but as far as abortion goes neither of us buy it - we take the revealed preference more seriously than the overt one, and the fact that this is even sometimes the right call makes the plan to give groups what they say they want rather than what we think will maximise utility quite a lot less appealing.

Convergent evolution.

By convergent evolution, some cultures can evolve the same ethics. Even many cultures. But a universal ethics implies that all cultures, no matter how diverse in ever other way, and including cultures which might have existed but didn't, would evolve the same ethics (or rather, would preserve the same ethics without evolving it further). This is extremely unlikely, and would require a much stronger explanation than the general idea of convergent evolution.

Anyway, my position is that different cultures in fact have different ethics with little in common between the extremes, so no explanation is needed.

Human ethics basically consists of five values. Different cultures at different times emphasize some values more than others. Genuine ethical disagreements tend to be about which of these values should take precedence in a given situation.

This is an interesting model. I don't remember encountering it before.

I believe you agree with me here, but just to make sure I read your words correctly: the commonality of these five values (if true) does not in itself imply a commonality of ethics. There is no ethics until all the decisions about tradeoffs and priorities between the values are made.

That ethics is basically the purity value being (in my mind) way over emphasized.

In many non-Christian traditions, sex is pure and sacred. People may need to purify themselves for or before sex, and the act of sex itself can serve religious purposes (think "temple whores", for instance). This is pretty much the opposite of Christian tradition.

The value of purity, and the feelings it inspires, may well be universal among humans. But the decision to what it applies - what is considered pure and what is filthy - is almost arbitrary. I suspect the same is true for most or all of the other five values - although there may be some constants - which only reinforces my conviction that there is no universal ethics.

It is possible that not all of those values are universal among evolved, intelligent, social beings (though it seems to me they might be).

It scarcely seems possible to me that any of these values are universal. A few quick thought-experiments, designed purely to demonstrate the feasibility of lacking these values in a sentient species:

Harm/care: some human sub-cultures have little enough of this value (e.g., groups of young males running free with no higher authority). Plus, a lot of our nurturant behaviour stems from raising children who are helpless for many years (later transferred to raising pets). If human children needed little to no care (like r-selected species), and if almost all human interactions took place between mostly self-dependant and independent individuals, then I think we might plausibly have vastly less empathy and "gentleness".

Fairness/reciprocity: some human societies have little of this, instead running on pure power hierarchies. A chief doesn't need to be visibly just if he's visibly powerful, self-interested and rewards his followers in hierarchical order.

Ingroup/loyalty: I'm not sure about this one. It may be that there are evolutionary social dynamics that tend to lead to it (game theory-like).

I speculate that ingroup loyalty might not exist, or might be weaker, in a species that didn't have war and similar competition between individuals. The reason we have such competition is that a male who wins can reproduce a lot more than average. But consider a species that's asexual, or where a male cannot physiologically mate more than once, or more than once a year, or with lifelong partner imprinting like in some birds. Then the biggest competition that can exist between individuals is for the amount of resources one individual and his kin can use. Ingroup dynamics could still form, but they'd be much weaker, I think; they would not be useful except in times of severe lack of food and similar resources.

Authority/respect: this is described in terms of social hierarchies, and there can certainly be intelligent social species that have no real hierarchies. Suppose there's little competition between individuals, as above, so no-one has a big incentive to become chief (it's enough to become relatively high status; no need to be first). And suppose there's little needed for coordinated action with a central decision-maker (no war, and people live in small enough groups that can coordinate efficiently). Or maybe these aliens are just much better at communication and coordination and can do it without taking orders. In such a scenario, I see no reason for a hierarchy to form.

Of course in any particular matter there can be a hierarchy of skill or knowledge. And if someone is consistently on top in a lot of such hierarchies, they can gain authority and respect. Or if someone is just consistently smarter than someone else, there can be authority and respect between individuals. I don't count these as examples; I take this value to mean the human game of status for status' sake.

Purity/sanctity: as I said above, even in humans the concept of purity is disconnected from what a particular culture considers to be pure...

Of course that is a coerced state. :-) Not being able to do something under threat of state action is textbook coercion.

That's a good point, but the choice is still assymetrical. If we allow people to interfere in each other's lives like this (i.e. the state doesn't coerce them to not interfere), than many people will attempt to interfere in the same thing at cross purposes. As a result, 1) we don't know what way of life will win out, and it may well be unethical; 2) a lot of people will coerce one another, which is no better than when the state does it.

If we're setting state policy, then we can either enforce some one ethical system on everyone, or we can let everyone rule themselves, but we still have to interfere to prevent people from coercing one another, otherwise there'll be chaos, not freedom. Different ethical systems will lead to any of these three systems (imposing ethics, freedom, and state-less chaos). But any system that enforces one ethics must do so explicitly; it's very unlikely to come up as an instrumental goal of ethics A to enforce a conflicting ethics B.

In this way, enforcing individual freedom and non-interference can be seen as qualitatively different from enforcing any given ethics and way of life, even though it still involves a form of coercion.

Either poor people would rather be listened to than have more money or vice versa. There is a fact of the matter about this question.

Yes, and as we said earlier, they almost always prefer being listened to. (When someone tells you "I want X", and you ask him "so do you want X or Y, really?" he'll usually respond "X" again.) What's more, if you value their self-reporting of their happiness, then giving them what they want is the best way to make them feel happier in the short term. If you try something else, like giving them money, or giving their descendants money, then even if in the very long term they'll be happier and admit it, they will reliably be unhappy in the short term due to not getting what they asked for and because you behaved condenscendingly towards them (by saying you know what's best for them better than they do).

For some people "helping everyone get what they want == freedom and responsibility for everyone" is a terminal value. For others, "making everyone happy" is a terminal value, but giving people what they want still becomes an instrumental value for the above reason.