"Some kind of pedagogical training tool," indeed.
Do you understand what logic is?
How does information have any meaning if some kind of structured and consistent system of thought is not applied?

We can utilize logic to explain the appearance of the sun but nothing will come close to directly observing the sun with your own two eyes.

I thought that the point of philosophy was to explain why the sun comes up, not to fry your retinas.

"Illogical premises" sure.
Give me one single example, pal.
I never denied that observation is useful-- it is, in fact, necessary.
But I would argue that observations are more or less useless without the application of logical reasoning.
From direct observation, the Earth appears to be flat. So I guess the Earth is flat.
You can make literally any claim and justify it as a "direct observation."
"Last night I had a dream in which I flew out of my bedroom window. I must be able to fly when I'm asleep!"
"All of my crops are failing. Witchcraft!"
Without some kind of methodology, discussing philosophy becomes pretty meaningless, because there is no real way to debate or compare ideas. Some kind of structure is required.
We use logic because it is a tool that can be employed to describe the world with a fairly high degree of accuracy. Simple observations are not enough.
I refuse to argue or challenge anything outside of logic because it is pointless and silly! If you postulate anything outside the realm of logic, it is entirely subjective speculation and I could postulate something completely the opposite and neither of us have any way of proving our point to the other. If nothing you say is provably true or false, then why should I bother even engaging with you, or you with me? Both of us have to be logical if we want to have any kind of meaningful discussion.

I'm just giving up on this thread.
Philosophy is supposed to be based on logic, not mysticism.
Enjoy your speculations.

Yes; your hypothesis that our moral sense is merely a genetic tool used for survival is insufficient to explain the complete moral sense.

...that's why I pointed out the significant influence of culture.

Do you agree that your moral sense tells you that the following acts are immoral?
(1) Cheating on your spouse, even if it is guaranteed that he/she never finds out about it.
(2) Turning a nation into farming animals for quick reproduction, and thus securing the survival of the species through sheer numbers.
(3) If your own survival is guaranteed (by, say, super powers), then all acts become moral because the end of surviving is already met.

(1) Yes, but I was raised in a society in which monogamy is valued.
(2) and (3) I think that you might have understood me in my "genetic tool for survival" claim-- I am talking about empathy, a real biological phenomenon; your given examples have nothing to do with how empathy works. Levels of empathy vary by individual, but the vast majority of the human race feels emotional distress when they see that another is in pain, the same way we feel nauseous when we see someone vomiting. This is natural for social animals. But again-- the amount of empathy one feels depends entirely upon the individual, and some individuals lack it entirely. They have no intuitive understanding of what is considered right or wrong, and no qualms whatsoever about harming other human beings.
...so the Golden Rule is the plumb line between good and evil, huh? How does that apply at all in the Trolley Problem? Whatever happens, you are still running people over with the trolley, no matter how altruistic you might be-- does "do unto others as you'd have them do unto you" really apply here?
What about war?
It is certainly not true that people will always want you to do unto them what you'd like them to do unto you, which is why rape is a crime, but that's besides the point, really. What is your reasoning for using specifically the Golden Rule? What line of reasoning led you to that "objective" conclusion?

what about the sub conscious? Have neurologists studied the speed of its operations?

Yes.

Read up on the observer effect. You do know that there is a section in the brain that takes the impression that it received from electrical signals and creates the world that you see?

That is literally what the linked article is about.
And the reason I linked said article was to refute your claim that the brain's impulses are only reactions to some kind of spiritual "mind state." Yes. You are correct. The brain processes information and synthesizes conscious experience, in that order-- but previously, you claimed that

[the brain] does not account for experience. Experience is the domain of the mind because experience is immaterial and the contents of the mind are immaterial as well.

and

Just because mental states correlate with the brain it does not mean there is a causation. I would flip the script an say that it is the mind that is senior to the brain. Mental states determine the chemicals that the brain secretes to add resonance to that mental state.

I see no evidence of any of these (entirely speculative) claims in the given facts.

@MonfortS26
idk ask haruki murakami

When I was born, how did 'nature' conjure up my perspective into this body? Why and how did it decide that my perspective is the right one? These were questions that I asked myself since I was 9 years old. Why am I me? Why am I not my brother? How did 'I' happen to be? — Susu

When you say "perspective," you seem to indicate what is traditionally termed a "mind."
Your mind (feel free to ignore my nomenclature), as a separate entity from yourself, is illusory (it's often termed the "user illusion"). That might not feel intuitively right, but a lot of truths don't. You can ask questions like "why am I me?" because as a human being, you are self-aware, and that means that you can effectively think about yourself as a separate entity because you can observe yourself and your mental processes and distinguish, "that is me." "I am thinking about philosophy." &c.
I would posit also that asking, "why am I not my brother?" is logically equivalent to asking, "why is 6 not 7?" or "why is red not blue?"

Just because the brain demonstrates physiological changes that match mental states does not mean the brain is creating those mental states. How did you calculate this? Did you measure the brains electrical speed or the speed of the mind?

No, I did not. But neurologists have done so hundreds of times.
Clearly you have not done your homework.
Those "physiological changes" you talk about occur before the "mental states" with which they correlate.

Many experiments have been done that have demonstrated the effect the brain has on matter.

I'd love to see your sources.

I believe they do, the mind is not solely reserved for human beings.

So if a flatworm has a mind, does an amoeba? How about a plant? Or a bacteria? Or a virus? Or bovine spongiform encephalopathy? How do you draw a line between what is and is not a "mind"?

But that still does not make the mind an independent entity from the brain.

Mental states determine the chemicals that the brain secretes to add resonance to that mental state.

Or, more logically, mental states are an experience caused by those chemicals.
And your above quote still does not answer the question: how do you "see" the effects of the mind on matter?
Another question. Do you believe that a flatworm has a mind? How about a grasshopper? Or an iguana, or a chimpanzee? Or is it only humans?

Interesting point-- and correct, but that person would be unable to think of it in the first place.

NOTHING, as @TheMadFool correctly stated earlier, is a completely negative concept.

However, unlike most objects (mental/physical) NOTHING is defined in the negative. In fact it is the ultimate negative - the absence of everything.

So it follows that we cannot describe NOTHING in positive terms. In other words, we cannot say what nothing is; we can only describe what it is not, which is literally anything.
For example,
NOTHING is not a slice of pie.
NOTHING is not green.
NOTHING is not a concept that we can discuss or even think of.
NOTHING is not what I think it is, and it's not what you think it is.
NOTHING is not what I am presently writing a post about.
Whatever you call it, what we are discussing in this thread is not NOTHING. If you can think of it, and you can label it with a name, and you can talk about it's properties or even lack thereof, it's not NOTHING. The NOTHING I insist it is not is not even NOTHING. And neither is that last one. And so forth. It is unapprehendable and incomprehensible.

If "NOTHING" does not exist as an idea, then how are we discussing it?
You are correct. There is NOTHING to understand, because as I stated before, NOTHING as you understand it has no properties and inherently is indescribable.
How does it make sense to describe the number zero as a "property" of NOTHING? They are two completely disparate concepts-- zero, in fact, more closely resembles my definition of NOTHING. It is purely ideological, and represents, in different contexts, different degrees and types of absence. Your NOTHING is nothing more than a semantic paradox; it has nothing to do with zero, and is more analogous to the Liar Paradox. It is a self-referential logical error.

I'm kidding.
Nothing is an idea. That's it. That's all it is. "Nothing" is how we conceptualize an absence of a specific thing or things within a given context. The confusion here seems to stem from the paradox of "nothing" being a conceptual "something," (an idea), because perhaps you imagine it to mean "the total absence of all things." It's doesn't. And even if it did, it's a self-defeating definition. It deteriorates into nonsense: you can't describe a thing that by definition must be indescribable. It's kind of like trying to count to infinity.

What is NOTHING ( N )? — TheMadFool

Nothing isn't, in fact.

Can we get some kind of definition on what objectivity actually is?

You can have everything above the brain stem removed, and no one (including yourself) would even notice. The only difference is that you'd loss all inhibition, become super exploratory, and couldn't learn anything new. — Wosret

This is almost certainly untrue.

Thought is made of hope and fear. It directs you towards desirable possibilities that are not ready at hand, and away from possible dangers that are not ready at hand. — Wosret

Are you suggesting that human cognition is restricted to these functions exclusively?

@noAxioms is correct.

But when the masses rebuke such elitism (Brexit; the 2016 Republican Primary and 2016 U.S. Presidential Election), they are dismissed as homophobic, xenophobic, racist, nativist misogynists. Their economic concerns barely make it onto any radar. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

The idea that Trump's movement was in any way populist is a complete sham. In fact, the majority of Trump's voter base was affluent white people. Brexit seems to draw a lot of parallels. And although I do think that the liberal response to and hatred of Trump supporters tends to be excessive, what else are they supposed to think about people who voted for a man who is so obviously "homophobic, xenophobic, racist, nativist [and] misogynistic?"
You clearly have been sidelined, and your quality of life is much lower than it could be. There are many people like you in America; some of them are white males; but the majority, despite affirmative action, are black or Latinx, or Native American, and especially women. There are definitely individuals who abuse the system... but often this opportunistic view comes from a history of being abused by it. When you have been trodden upon all your life, you don't expect the system to be fair. You take what you can get.
The efforts that have been made by the government to fix inequality and improve the lives of the working class are far from perfect. How could they be, in a nation where legislators are afflicted with rabid bipartisanship and paid by corporations and lobbyists to advance their interests? And even if the legislation had been the best is could possibly be, the fairest and cleanest and most humane, there would undoubtedly still be poverty, and low quality of life and people who work their a**es off for nothing-- because all of these efforts are really just a Band-Aid on the festering wound that is free-market capitalism.
Read A Colony in a Nation by Chris Hayes and Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehitsi Coates and maybe The Communist Manifesto. (This last I would discourage you from taking to seriously, however; its ideology is pretty crude.)

Marx believed that capitalism oppressed the individual-- suppressed the individual's voice-- , and that many individual beliefs and behaviors were responses to that oppression. In so many words, he claims multiple times in his and Engels' Manifesto that capitalism causes real psychological distress.

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people — Karl Marx

I apologize for any misunderstanding. I accede that there are, of course, many similarities among moral codes between cultures. Perhaps I over-emphasized this point, but there can also be significant differences: for example, in the Western world eating the dead is considered disgusting and perverse, while in other parts of the world it would be considered immoral not to do so. And I agree with @Samuel Lacrampe in a very loose sense that to some degree, humans are born with a quasi-'moral-compass'. What I disagree with is his claim that "it is part of objective reality, not man-made." It is a biological phenomenon entirely. I am not confusing "meta-" and normative ethics: I am suggesting that there are effectively no "meta-ethics" at all. I have, in fact read the OP, and understood the distinction between the two areas from the beginning:

A bad outcome is undoubtably not morally bad if it is an honest, unintentional accident, such as accidentally running over a person that deliberately jumps in front of the car. — Samuel Lacrampe

My issue is not with the above statement. It is with the OP's assertions about the nature of morality.

P3: It is absurd to suppose that knowledge of good and evil is taught. If it was, then who was the first teacher, and "why would he tell us?!" — Samuel Lacrampe

This is sort of like saying, "It's absurd to suppose that language is taught! Who invented it? Why would he teach us about it?" That is simply not the way that ideas are spread. Morality is an emergent social phenomenon. It is less taught than it is learnt: we observe what is considered acceptable behavior and pattern our behavior accordingly, which for the most part comes naturally to us: we are social animals, and most of our species has a fairly strong empathetic connection to other human beings.
Those human beings classically deemed psycho- or socio-paths, however, have little to no sense of empathy. In other words, they clearly lack a natural sense of what is considered good and evil; but even so, without the sort of emotional cognizance of moral "facts" that most of us have, they can understand morality and ethics on an intellectual level. Some may go on to become serial killers or violent felons, but others become successful, productive citizens. This would suggest that on some level, we adopt a moral code not because we recognize it innately as somehow "right," but because it makes our lives much easier within the context of our community.
I used the word "subjective" thoughtlessly to describe morality in my previous post, claiming that one of @Samuel Lacrampe's statements was logically less an argument against "subjectivity" than for it; while I do believe this to be the case, I do not actually side with the subjectivists. To clear things up:

Moral subjectivism: Morality is not dependent on society but only on the individual. Anything is okay as long as one lives by [one's] own principles (hypocrisy, inconsistency can be embraced). — Gene Myers, WWU

This obviously does not reflect my views on the subject. I agree to some degree with relativism, which suggests that morality is cultural, but relativism tends to be overly dismissive of moral universals.
Morality is inherent to a variable degree in most individuals, but cultural values can also have a strong influence.
If morality is objective-- universal-- where do you draw the line between good and evil? How do you solve the Trolley Problem?

No, Austin. Money does not buy happiness-- but money can buy things that significantly improve your quality of life. You are most likely going to be more happy if you can adequately support yourself and your family; if you can afford food, utilities, healthcare, education, transportation, etc.
Take a look at this. And this.
Arguing that we shouldn't be concerned just because we might be comparatively privileged is simply ridiculous. And by the way, having a home and access to water utilities would actually put you in at least the top ~47% globally.

Has this focus on creating an ideal society been futile and instead we should just focus on the individual and their beliefs about and in relation to society? — Posty McPostface

I believe that's what Marx was trying to do.

But then there is a contradiction because on one hand, our moral system does not tolerate immoral acts, and on the other hand, it says we should be tolerant of subjective differences. — Samuel Lacrampe

This is not a disproof of the subjectivity of morality-- in fact, it is the opposite. Your logic is deeply flawed. The contradiction you think to be so crippling to the philosophy of subjective morality only presents a problem if you actually presuppose that morality is objective!
Additionally: Occam's Razor, please.
Are we required to make more assumptions by asserting that moral codes, which can differ vastly among countries, ethnicities, and even communities, are sets of taught acceptable behaviors and views, coupled with a genetic legacy for survival in social groups; or that human beings are somehow endowed from birth with a natural understanding of such abstract and hotly debated concepts as "good" and "evil," which somehow exist in the physical world-- perhaps as a field, like magnetism?

The brain itself is just a highly complex system of matter, it does not account for experience. Experience is the domain of the mind because experience is immaterial and the contents of the mind are immaterial as well.

--@Fumani

Incorrect.