> Do you think most people are constructing their morality on top of some fundamental beliefs?

Yes, but not necessarily consciously, and certainly not necessarily consistently.

Yes. I can not imagine any other conception of moral obligation. How would you come up with an obligation to do X or not do Y without an underlying belief structure?

I was asking about the second half of the sentence.

(But to answer your question in terms of what I am getting at, you would work backwards from what you were comfortable with and then tell yourself that it was your underlying belief structure, whether that were meaningfully true or not)

I see. I guess I took it for granted that everyone understood moral obligation to mean a commandment to act a certain way due to moral principles. Depending on how you define "comfortable with" we might be using different language to talk about the same thing. I am uncomfortable with immoral behavior? I do not think you are advancing moral relativism/nihilism?

I do not think most people use moral reasoning to guide (even semi-consitently) their actions. However I assumed that anyone who says "You have a moral obligation to do X" was speaking in a philosophical context and not using it as a euphemism or "Crypto is /<oo1."

Well, someone could be discussing in good faith, articulate a principle that they believe represents their morality, reason out a consequence of that principle and then observably act in a contradictory manner.

(now that I have written that, I guess part of what I am getting at is that the more often that actually happens, the more you have to discount the articulation of moral principles rather than discounting the people or the good faith. Personally, I'm pretty optimistic about people and pretty cynical about the things they say...)