Thanks for reading Ed. I see your point and it is true that these can refer to a moral code of a specific society instead of a universal standard. What I’m trying to get at is that something like “we have a shared understanding to minimize human suffering” begs the question *why* minimize human suffering, at which point you’d have to say something to the effect of “we have a shared belief in a universal axiom like ‘human suffering is bad.’” (Of course, you could say, ‘because we have a shared understanding that human suffering is bad,’ but I’d just ask why again.)