I am qiute a bit offended by many people and many philosophers (professional as much as amateur ones) mistaking empathy for morality.

I do believe morality exists, and in my opinion it's a survival tool for the unit's DNA derivatives by protecting its offspring. I believe all warm-blooded animals (mammals and birds) have the capacity for ethics, and they do practice it.

I oppose the common veiw that all empathy-related sentiments are moral issues.

In fact, I oppose the fact that many articles here and in other media invoke morality on their side when proposing a claim or defending one; I feel it is just a vehicle, a lingual vehicle, to call something moral, while it has to do with empathy, not with morals. You see, saying "I am on the side of morality" immediately puts the speaker on a high horse; a challenge or attack against his or her view is positioned ab ovo as an attack on morality, common decency, high ideals, and therefore altogether it is a vile and despicable point of view, because obviously morals and ethics are always squeeky clean and unassailable.

Hence I am offended when someone invokes morality when the issue is empathy. This goes, I am sorry, mainly for those who advocate vegetarianism and veganism; but this is just one such misuse of morality.

There are or might be other issues aside from empathy and pity that mistakenly mix themselves up with morality. I can't think of any.

Of course one needs a definition for morality to discuss this topic; and oy, there goes the rub.

Since ethics and morality have as many definitions as philosophers, I suggest we all propose (if anyone wants to join this discussion) OUR OWN definition, and responding to that person we speak in such terms and idas that for the sake of argument WE ACCEPT THAT THEIR DEFINITION IS TRUE. This has a word in philosophy, but I don't know it; the pretense that we accept a view we don't believe in, for the duration of the discussion. (This is fun when discussiong Christianity, because it is easy to prove huge logical discrepancies in its dogma; harder to discuss other philosophies only from their own point of view to prove them wrong, but can be done; my favourite modus, and hence I am disliked (I think) on this site.)

That's all.

Question: in light of your own definition of morality / ethics, do you think people invoke morality on their own side of the argument, despite its irrelevance, in order to unfairly strengthen their arguments?

The parser of this editor put in: "please accept the comment that answers this question" I don't know what it means. No clue whatsoever. It's a discussion, not a test. There are no right or wrong answers; only defendable and undefendable ones. This is a nuance, and the parser INSISTS that it's a test on which we get graded? WTF eh?