Truth and Morality

This is completely random, but I just stumbled across the following question left on a blackboard in the room where my Brown Dems meeting was held: "Are there any true moral statements?" Quite honestly, this strikes me as an exceedingly easy question to answer. It hinges entirely on whether or not one is willing to accept some sort of bedrock principle defining either Good or Bad in some way as the foundation of your system of morality. If you are (for instance, I'd say that "for sentient beings to be happy is good and for sentient beings to suffer is bad"), then there are plenty of moral statements that are true as a matter of logical deduction from that starting assumption. And it is an assumption, mind you: I don't think there is a way to construct a whole system of morality without making a decision about what sort of moral axiom you use, and rationality itself cannot provide that postulate. You can pick the principle I described as being my own above, or a different one. I could argue with you about it, but I don't think what I'd be appealing to was ultimately your rational side. I would be trying to convince you that your principle disagrees with my principle in cases where your deep-seated visceral reaction is that your principle gets it wrong.

And if you don't take some sort of bedrock moral assumption? Then what is there to say? If you don't define good or bad, then there is no good and no bad, and therefore no morality to talk about. If what this question really means is, can there be a system of morality that completes itself based solely on logic and empiricism, wholly without relying on the kind of assumption I'm describing, I think the answer is no. But I also don't think that's a problem, because it's really not that hard to just set some postulates. We do it all the time in math, and quite honestly we do it all the time in life generally (starting with the assumption that the world really exists, or at least that we should act as if it does).