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ciphergoth comments on Ethics has Evidence Too - Less Wrong
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If you're a classic moral realist, then your position makes very straightforward sense: morality is "out there" and we can discover facts about it.
If you're not a moral realist, then the relationship between morality and facts is a lot less straightforward, and I don't see that just roundly asserting that we should treat them the same way moves us forward.
Well I was bringing this up in the context of normative ethics and it isn't at all clear to me what normative ethics would even mean if moral realism is false. My best guess is that normative ethics just becomes descriptive ethics (where we're trying to codify the ethics that in fact humans (or the West, or you) hold jointly. And I think everything in the OP holds true for descriptive ethics as well (except maybe instead of how people say people should act is replaced where possible by data about how they actually act). For non-cognitivist theories, as komponisto indicated above, intuitions are even more central- again we're just not really doing normative ethics anymore.
So yeah, my position doesn't quite work as stated if moral realism is false. But if moral realism is false then normative ethics doesn't quite work as stated.
Presumably fair enough - if talking about humans.
Humans share a fair amount - e.g. see:
"Everybody Laughs, Everybody Cries: Researchers Identify Universal Emotions"
Similarly there's likely to be a baserock of human morality, that can be uncovered by conventional science.
For example, "Human Universals".
Among the universals that Donald Brown identifies (listed here), the following all have moral dimensions:
biases in favor of in-group, prevention or avoidance of incest, pride, resistance to abuse of power, self-control, sexual modesty, sanctions for crimes against the collectivity, means of dealing with conflict, murder proscribed, good and bad distinguished, distinguishing right and wrong, judging others, concept of fairness, disapproval of stinginess, envy, symbolic means of coping with envy, etiquette, insulting, interpreting behavior, redress of wrongs, resistance to abuse of power, rape proscribed, pride, taboos, hope, hospitality, moral sentiments, limited effective range of moral sentiments, customary greetings, generosity admired, some forms of violence proscribed.