>I don't know if you are right or wrong, but your statement sounds to me almost exactly like the one that I hear from religious zealots about atheists: "No one to answer to, therefore, no morals or ethics".
Which is not far from true.
Morals one makes for themselves ("personal moral code") are not morals proper. They could just as well include that's its ok to kill kittens for fun (to give a silly example) -- that they don't is mostly thanks to their idiosyncrasy.
>There is a point of view from which this makes sense: Since there is no standard code, everyone is free to choose their own;
Ha, haven't read your second paragraph while replying to the first, but basically, yes, this.
That's a new definition then, because for millennia morals were derived from exactly those "externally enforced behaviours": from religion, society, culture, etc.
The personal codes someones makes on their own can be anything and everything ("shit on everybody to get rich" is a perfectly valid code that millions use). Nobody would call that "moral" though -- because precisely morals are those beyond the individual whims (though whether an individual follows them its their choice).
Personal principles someone follows are only fit to be called morals if they follow an extended, external, moral code. Which might change over time, and be culture-specific, but it's not "whatever I say".
As far as one can tell, social animals show something equivalent to morals in every experiment we can devise -- and in the vast majority of cases, it is not a learned trait (elephants being the best known counterexample in that their cultural norms and morals are indeed learned).
We can't really experiment with humans, but the few experiments that have cleared ethical committees, it appears that babies as young as 6 months have a sense of equality and justice, see e.g. [0]
Which is not far from true.
Morals one makes for themselves ("personal moral code") are not morals proper. They could just as well include that's its ok to kill kittens for fun (to give a silly example) -- that they don't is mostly thanks to their idiosyncrasy.
>There is a point of view from which this makes sense: Since there is no standard code, everyone is free to choose their own;
Ha, haven't read your second paragraph while replying to the first, but basically, yes, this.