Mo_, I meant objective when I say universal. I think a context dependent morality is still universal, in the sense that any two people in the same context are bound by the same morality. If that’s not the case, I don’t know how it can be objective either.
This statement is much too strong. Why can’t someone who would stone their daughter recognize that he thinks I’m wrong, and then put the burden right back on me? We can’t both bear the burden, and it’s not useful to talk about a burden if who bears it depends on who you ask, so either we can shift the burden back and forth by mere internal recognition of our own beliefs, or that recognition is not sufficient to determine who bears the burden in the first place.
What about the classic case of stealing the cure for your dying wife or child? This seems to be a clear case of a conflict of morality and immorality in the same way that hiding jews during the holocaust was a conflict between morality and imprudence.
I’m not saying that there’s no difference between prudence and morality, and I don’t think Mo_ is either. We’ve both argued that they are at different places along the same spectrum, which is to say that they’re different in the same way that children and adults are different, or hot and cold are different, or natural and artficial are different. But the ways in which they are the same is significant in all these cases. Moreover, for my position anyway, it’s significant that the line between prudence and morality is somewhat arbitrary and subjective, even though to a great degree the spectrum itself is objective.
To this last point, perhaps looking for borderline cases is the best way to make this argument. Is the existence of a “right to choose” in respect to abortion a moral or a prudent question? I think people will come down on either side. Similarly, look at libertarian arguments for minimizing government and taxation. For some, the question is about what’s prudent: government just makes people worse off, etc. etc… For others, it’s moral: government has no right to restrict our freedom, etc. etc. Here too, it’s not clear cut whether the question is a moral one or a prudential one. It will depend where you draw the line.