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But then, edsheppa has not really told us, so far as I know, what his view actually is. So we are left guessing

It was in my first post on this thread, #56. And further it was in my reply to you in #121. And you replied to that post.

It's interesting that edsheppa claims not to associate with this view.

See #173 where I say

Yes, my view is in the broad category of ethical thought that article describes.

"What is signified by the term, 'innate?'"

I have in mind the standard meaning. Unlike some I try very hard to use words that way to avoid confusion.

adjective: not established by conditioning or learning
adjective: present at birth but not necessarily hereditary; acquired during fetal development

As to what it "signifies," here is an example. There were a couple of recent studies about "fairness." One compared human to chimp behaviors in the Ultimatum Game. The game has two playing roles, Proposer and Responder. A certain amount of money is in available. The Proposer proposes a division of the money between the players and the Reponder can accept the division or reject it so that neither player gets anything.

When people play this game, the Proposer generally offers much more to the Responder than you might "rationally" expect. IIRC, it is often an even split and offers less than 20% to the Reponder are generally rejected.

Some researchers cleverly arranged for chimps to play this game. Unlike human players, the chimp Proposers offered the least non-zero amount possible (e.g. nine grapes for me and one for you) and the chimp Responders generally accepted these very unequal distributions.

The other study compared how identical and fraternal twins played the game. Identical twins were very much more alike in the proposed and accepted divisions than the fraternal twins.

So the evidence is that fairness has a very strong genetic component and, further, people have it and chimps don't. This is the kind of innate human value I'm speaking of.

That'll go right over her head. Something about Gawd-ah making people such that they understand each other better than the 'lower animals'

I prefer this example:

Smart Dogs

Dogs can innately understand human cues, emotions, and have adopted logical strategies to deal with humans and each other. Even chimps don't exhibit this level of understanding and intuition.

Over a couple of millennia, we've breed into these dogs (via the same mechanism as evolution) some quite astounding social features.

It's not hard to imagine how complex social skills such as morality can develop (and become innately fixed) within a social species.

adjective: not established by conditioning or learning

adjective: present at birth but not necessarily hereditary; acquired during fetal development

Here's another:

adjective: possessed at birth; inborn; possessed as an essential characteristic; inherent. [American Heritage Dictionary]

In this last, the main point is that something that is innate is essential to the nature or make-up of the person or thing in question. That is to say, it is not something acquired later on or, as a philospher might say, it is not an "accident" pertaining to the person or thing in question. "Innate" is distinguished from both "congenital" -- which is applied principally to physical characteristics, especially to defects acquired during fetal development -- and "heredity"-- which refers to what is genetically transmitted to the person or thing in question.

But if innate stands for something that is neither congenital nor hereditary, to what can it possibly refer? I submit that natural science has no method to determine this. And so if a scientist wants to speak of that which is "innate," and then found a moral theory on it, he is completely free to do so; but then he would not be speaking as a scientist, but as a philosopher. And if the scientist in question is a scientific materialist, a/k/a a metaphysical naturalist, he has no way to speak of "essence," or an "essential characteristic," which is the principle meaning I take from the word "innate."

I am not aware of any explanation given by science that could account for any building up of configurations of non-living material particles or building blocks that lead to an "essence" (or life for that matter) in the manner that word is used in philosophy. In philosophy, "essence" and "nature" are closely cognate.

I'm not saying you aren't free to be a philosopher and speculate about moral theory if you want to. I'm just asking you to recognize that if you are doing that, your speculation cannot be deduced from the premises of methodological or metaphysical naturalism, i.e., scientific materialism.

In short, you are producing a "just-so story" that isn't even systematically founded on your own doctrine. And this is why I find your moral theory unpersuasive, to say the least.

Utimately, you want to derive your moral theory from science. But as Jerry Fodor writes, "Science is about facts, not norms; it might tell us how we are, but it couldn’t tell us what is wrong with how we are. There couldn’t be a science of the human condition."

Mankind historically has left that sort of thing up to philosophy and theology.