[andyfox]

No doubt some of us are not consistent in getting from point A to point B.

But I think your geometry example is not apropos. No question that when I get a wrong answer to a geometry problem, it's not because I am not using Euclidian geometry. It's because I've gone wrong somewhere in geting from some point to another.

But the same doesn't hold for ethics and morality. Because in ethics the same or similar values or axioms don't necessarily lead to the same conclusion. Unlike geometry, where an answer is either right or wrong, in ethics and real life there are degrees of rightness and wrongness, and competing rights and wrongs that won't necessarily lend themseles to a rigorous, mathematical or geometric answer that is indisputably right or wrong.

Three people are drowning: one's son and two strangers. (Sorry, Matt.) One can save either only one's son or both of the two others. We probably all agree that the morally correct thing to do is to save as many lives as possible. But we also probably all agree that we owe our family more than we owe to strangers. So here we have competing values that seemingly contradict one another and that are not easily resolved. What about if the two strangers are young children? Or if they are octogenarians? Or if one's son was recently diagnosed with a terminal disease?

Often enough, it would seem, solutions in real life may not be as clear and logical as you would have them. I do agree, however, that more often that most people think, lack of logical rigor is also a cause of moral clarity (and I myself am certainly no exception here). Just not quite as much as you think.