I think it is quite interesting to note the difference in focus - In Western Philosophy (WP), ethics is, if I may frame it really crudely, an attempt to create a cohesive picture of an objectively preferable morality (morality being distinct as the set of preferences of a particular culture or society). So many different philosophers have their own models and spent centuries disagreeing, I think mainly because the focus of WP is on the pursuit of truth, and what arises out of this is a sense that transcendent truth is largely inaccessible, and so all texts must rely on thorough reasoning to escape the muddiness of common ideas. As such, it is not common to find WPs who advocate a full 'recipe' for ethical character, except perhaps, for the Stoics, whose focus is much on practically applicability, which is not the grand focus of WP, which as said above, is precisely an epistemic exercise. Buddhism, as a doctrine rather than discipline, can advocate a set of behaviours and regard them as instrumental to something higher. WP has slowly abandoned spirituality because it is not something which can be examined with reason, and this puts a ceiling on the kinds of things you can do. It means that one is forced to justify everything one says, and fully expect to be contradicted. Religious disciplines, on the other hand, can rely on charismatic language to persuade. That said, Buddhism does not rely as much on charismatic language and persuasion as other doctrines. Nor does it rely on myths or fables, rather on what is a very philosophical reflective process. It seems almost obvious once it has been said, that we will all die, we will all suffer. Stoics felt a similar need to remind us, and both had the idea that this perspective would make us better people - treat ourselves and others better, by realising that we have nothing to gain from anger or selfishness. In fact, this being part of the idea that coming to see the world as it is will be liberating, goes beyond the explicit statements of many WPs, who often take it as read that knowledge is a good in itself, and with understanding, we will all just sort of know what to do with it. Buddhism seeing enlightnment as instrumental to something in particular - transcendance - I think is an important difference. Overall though, there is an emphasis on discipline rather than inquest. The answer has been reached, we just have to follow it. This is the fundamental difference as far as I can tell. Which is why there is no term for 'ethics' in the writings - there is no need to examine or formulate or criticise, the answer is assumed to be reached. Not a terrible answer, but for good or ill, certainly lacking in challenge.
I think there are some flaws in the way you are describing the difference between western moral philosophy/ethics and Buddhist ethics. First, the notion that there would be no objectivity in Buddhism to which one could compare the soundness or moral value of one's actions is just inaccurate. There are objectively wrong things to do: eating meat for example. The larger idea of an objective framework in which the individual finds him or herself confronted with the discrepancy between desires and expectations is universal, as I see it. It is the problem of individual and society, my wants versus my duties. I think what needs to be separated for a good comparison between western and eastern ethical system is religion from the culture. *edit That is, we should separate religion from culture when thinking about comparing cross-cultural ethics: so we can compare American ethics to Indian ethics, but we should compare Christian ethics to Buddhist ethics. When studying the religion in particular, that is, just studying Buddhist ethics, we can never really separate the religion from the culture, since it is the surrounding culture that informs the ethical system of the religion./end edit First, we can call into question the division between west and east altogether, but let's just take it for the sake of conversation that there is such a distinction. Western ethics has been associated with Judeo-Christian values, monotheism in particular, a set of legalistic codes and doctrines that one measures one's worth against how well they live up to these expectations. Eastern ethics has been associated with a more diffuse, pantheistic, polytheistic, open-ended kind of "ethos" wherein the individual finds self-interpretation in the community and the local deities/practices/rites to which they ascribe. Both of these descriptions are rather orientalist, and misleading, because they do not attend to the ways in which western religions have developed over time, they presuppose a fixed idea of "Judeo-Christianity" that is predominately Protestantized. The eastern description gives in to fantasies of the east wherein things are exotic, fluid, cyclical, "mystical," and so on. Both of these are caricatures that serve to re-intrench our understanding of ourselves and the other. The more I think about it, the more it may be difficult or impossible to actually compare Western and Buddhist moralities because it seems like an apples and oranges situation. But I mostly came here to say that Buddhism does offer objectivity in ethics, the idea of "objectivity" can be called into question. Also that Buddhism does rely on mythology, of course, the Buddha was enlightened, and his story is of course the foundational myth that gives birth to the "religion."
I'm not sure what you are saying is fair - my argument was largely that ethics is a discipline which consists of using rational arguments to attempt to underpin all morality with simple logically consistent principles. Buddhism is doctrinal, and so there is an inherent difference. Besides, what is being practiced is morality, not ethics - it is an expression of certain values, rather than an attempt to derive a single central principle from it. Most ethical disciplines in WP can be boiled down to single-focus principles - maximisation of happiness for the greatest number, rational self-interest, universalisability, etc. Buddhism perhaps could be seen as a minimisation of suffering, but the structure of the texts don't work in quite the same way. It is not that there isn't an assumption of objectivity, but rather that it is more than that - it assumes universality, not mere 'objectivity' (which properly refers to commonly available perspective rather than universal or absolute truth, though the phrase 'objective truth' necessarily entails something which is true, and the truth of which is objectively available), and does not argue from abstracts like WP, but rather from resonant observations, such as the Buddha's journey where he encounters an old man, a sick man and a corpse. It is a very different approach, is all I'm saying. I was not arguing against the idea of an objective framework - I have a very strong detestation of relativism. I was merely making a direct comparison between two isolated disciplines. Ethics is 'objective morality' in the sense I speak of it - morality is just a set of normative behavioural judgments held commonly to a certain group or society, whereas ethics attempt to make these values commonly available for scrutiny by using universal metrics - reason and empathy. Finally, mine was not a comparison between Western and Buddhist morality, it was a direct response to the topic of discussion, which was a comparison of the concept of ethics, and how it applies to the Western Philosophical tradition (which is a specific thing, different from practiced social values, and actually rather ivory-towery if I'm being honest) and Buddhism (which as a doctrine, can be assessed in the WP tradition as if it were another theory) respectively. Having taken a few classes in philosophy, I can tell you, it is far different from just reading and comparing opinions, although there certainly is a lot of that. There is a lot of rather anal attention to syllogistic argument and the construction of useful conceptual definitions, consistency of semantics, etc. The late 19th and 20th century saw it formulate universal rules for logic and codify them into mathematical formulae. So it leans with a good deal of heft on a priori reasoning, logic, rational discussion, structure, and so on. Often it gets very nitpicky, mainly because all premises must be justified. You'll notice a lot of people talking in terms of 'but here you assume xyz', or speaking of logical fallacies, unsupported premises, etc. That's the imprint of WP. Not western culture, which is a different thing, but rather Western Philosophy, which has its roots in the Elenchus, Socrates's teaching method, which consists mainly of eliciting more and more foundational explanations from the interlocuter until a contradiction is revealed. Plato's Republic is full of examples of this in practice. Socrates's whole method was formed in response to the dogmatic and doctrinal teachings of what were called Sophists, and were essentially private tutors with their own curricula, and own ideas of what made for a good man and the good life, etc. Socrates changed the focus to truth for truth's sake, so that learning was no longer an instrumental activity, but a good in itself. Of course, these are all crude reductions, but this isn't an academic article. Anyways, I don't think there are 'apples and oranges' comparisons. Those are only the case if you haven't narrowed your parameters sufficiently. I mean, if someone assked me 'are apples or oranges better', it would be meaningless, but if 'better' meant 'a more viable farming option', that is certainly an answerable question, we just look at soil conditions, planting time, time to maturity, output, market price projections, labour intensivity, etc. Same here - I think the question is narrow enough - how does the WP concept of ethics apply to Buddhism? My answer is 'weakly', basically.
Comparison is not always about determining which is "better," but rather, in order to compare two things as opposed, they need to have something in common, a third thing, through which the comparison is made legitimate. My post, briefly, was to avoid the dangers of illegitimate comparison by assuming the absence or presence of any related system of ethics-moral programmatic in either camp. These terms, morals, ethics, objectivity, etc., are not Indian terms, they are English terms with a heritage. Simply translating them, by using them, into a different context obscures a) the Buddhist system and b) our utilization of these terms. Since you're a student of philosophy interested in Buddhist ethics, you ought to think about taking some religion courses that teach this kind of critique.
Could you elucidate? Buddhism seeing enlightnment as instrumental to something in particular - transcendance - I think is an important difference.
Becoming enlightened frees you from the eternal cycle of suffering and rebirth on earth, essentially. It's where things start getting metaphysical. But it's difficult to deal with Buddhism as a whole in the WP tradition, unless we directly and exclusively address the Sutras (which is not what I have been doing here), and even then, extracting arguments is not as straightforward as would be for a WP text.