Paper Tigers

I'm taking a philosophy course on ethics and the first thing that I notice about the subject is that the conflicts between people seem primarily to be fabricated from misunderstanding of what the other is saying and the seemingly innate desire to prove one's philosophical opponent wrong. I'll draw an example from another field which I am more familiar. Dr.'s Stephen J. Gould and Nile Eldrich published together on the topic of punctuated equilibrium which states that evolution is characterized by long periods of stasis with periodic rapid jumps in evolution, in which a peripheral isolate is separated from the main population under slightly different conditions and eventually replaces the parent population when conditions change to favor the isolated new species. Many people (especially young earth creationists) have latched onto this as the theory that disproves Darwinian gradual evolution. Actually, punctuated equilibrium is predicted by population genetics which relies on the principal of evolution by natural selection. The argument that Gould and Eldridge had with other evolutionary biologists was the significance and relative quantities of evolutionary transisions that occur suddenly as the result of the introduction of a peripheral isolate or via what's known as non alosteric evolution (by which the main parent population changes into a distinct species from its ancestors gradually). People have trumped up the argument so much that they seem to feel that the two processes are mutually exclusive and therefore one of them is completely wrong. Then again, people wouldn't sell as many books if all that they said was that a compomise must be made between the views on the significance of the various processes.
'Ethical' philosophers do something similar by constructing definitions or implications for a principal introduced by a colleague and then 'disprove' their argument on the basis of the new definition. For example, today in class we discussed ethical relativism, particularly cultural relativism. The argument goes as such: the relativist says "We should not judge other cultures out of respect for their right to their beliefs, largely because we cannot understand the inticasies of that culture enough to pass absolute moral judgment."
To which the philosopher we were studying would respond "you don't actually respect their culture because respect implies some sort of a positive judgment and if we aren't allowed to make negative judgment then any positive judgment is worthless. Furthermore, if we cannot judge others, the can they judge us? Can we even judge ourselves?"
"Ok then, we should tolerate the other culture's moral views if you want to put so fine a point on it. If we do not understand the system of beliefs which those people draw their morals from, and the ranking of their values, then we cannot state that they are morally wrong, especially if their argument would still be logically correct. As for foreigners judging us, we listen to what foreigners have to say all the time. We only really acknowledge them when they are pointing out a hypocrisy or contradiction in our system of beliefs. And as for judging ourselves, everybody has a unique system of beliefs, they aren't beliefs that are all exclusive to any individual but rather a unique ordering of the value of each value."
"Aha! Then you admit that your original statement is completely wrong! Cultures can pass judgment on one another and you even said that we all have the same values!"
"No, I said that we have different permutations of the values that we give to ethical statements of should or aught, besides a lot of it is entirely circumstantial!"
"But people still have a universal system, I win."
"What!? That universal system is logic, which can be used on ethical statements. The statements that make up that logical system are personal or shared within a culture. I could stay a should b. a then ethically b. It doesn't mean that the ethical decisions that one comes to or the system of actions is in any way universal."
"But you still stay that EVERYBODY SHOULD use logic. That in itself is an objective ethical statement.
"Fine! That's the only one! Are you happy!? Besides, how would be even know if we should use logic? After all, we're had to use logic to come to that conclusion. In any case, this argument SHOULD have been over ages ago, because clearly neither of us ever agreed on what we were even talking about; you were saying that there exists universal truths about morals while I was saying that one's ethical decisions and code of action are dependent on the value ranking of ethical statements, the actual order of which is dependent on culture or individual. We obviously have different opinions on what's more important in a discussion of ethics. But I wont hold that against you since I'm a relativist and I'll 'tolerate' your opinion because I'm sure that in your own head, it makes logical sense, logic being the only objective ethic which I will hold onto since I can't even think of how to argue without it!"
"Ok then, I win."
"Fine, if that's what you want to believe."