By Nick Bostrom.

Metametaethics/preamble:
1. Many traditional debates in metaethics, such as between realism and antirealism, may not carve the possibility space of nature at its joints. Even if one perfectly understood ethics, it might be unclear which side would be the winner in these debates, or the adjudication might turn out to depend on seemingly minor and semi-arbitrary definitional stipulations that were made along the way.

1. There is not a sharp separation between morality, law, and custom. These may be broadly the same sort of thing, albeit with some potentially important differences in emphasis, including, but not limited to:

a. Custom vs. morality. Policed by distinct kinds of passion: externally, morality enforced with anger and indignation; custom with disdain. Internally, morality is enforced by feelings of remorse; custom with embarrassment.

b. Law vs. morality. Law is typically codified and enforced by formal institutions; morality is typically not codified (although different authors may have various theories and claims), and is enforced decentrally by informal institutions and social sentiment.

i. If law were perfect and comprehensive, there would be little or no need for morality. This may become increasingly feasible with technological advances.

ii. (Are modern societies with well-functioning legal systems and stable high-capacity states less moralistic than societies that are less technologically advanced or more anarchic?)

iii. I’m aware of the descriptive/normative distinction that is commonly made. The approach taken here may seem to ignorantly blur it, because it does not start by taking this distinction for granted.

iv. Underlying both law and morality there is a deeper layer—abstract properties of arrangements that regulate conduct. Law and morality are roughly symmetric with respect to this layer.

Read the full paper:
https://nickbostrom.com/papers/mountethics.pdf

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