We, Moral Agents, ask the question "What Ought one do?" however reality answers.
We ask "What is the force due to gravity between objects A and B?" however reality answers. (luckily in this case a means of learning the answer has been developed)
OK, I agree. That is a key feature of my framework - that a society's norms will have effects that can serve as feedback.
Indeed I define knowledge as the 100% point at the end of a continuum. I used that definition of Moral Competency to elicit your definition (the definition you think is relevant to Moral Agency) so that I could make the case that those two are not connected. It sounded like you thought that 'Moral Competency was the accuracy of someone's knowledge of the society's current consensus on Morality'. Was this right? If so I pointed out that knowledge of the consensus does not correlate with knowledge (or even accurate belief) of the "true moral code".
As a practical necessity, yes, a passing level of moral competence involves understanding society's norms. It's possible to have more than that, as a conscientious critic of society or an able legislator does. However, on a day-to-day basis, ordinary people cannot be expected to be deep thinkers and make the morally right decisions consistently without reference to social consensus. The deep thought, debate, empirical study, etc. are done when making and implementing the norms.
Separately: Why ought society be sustained? You have claimed that society's norms change promoting the continence of the society. You also seem to claim that knowledge of society's consensus on "What ought one do?" can be used to measure Moral Competency. This seems to indicate that you are presupposing that society ought to be sustained.
Survival is instinctual. It's a built-in motivation. It's also impossible to have morality without moral agents.
Humans are a social species. That's also built in and won't change. A small percentage of humans choose solitary lives, but that just isn't possible for the mass of humanity. Nor are human females going to start laying thousands of eggs and leaving them to their fate, as some insects do. Society in general is here to stay, as long as humans and other social species exist.
If you are asking a question about a particular society, then I certainly do judge some societies to be morally monstrous. I think that promoting social change in such societies is usually better than destroying them.
"Reference" in the wikipedia definition does not refer to "knowledge of" but rather "the actions could have these characteristics" if my Philosophy courses are any indication. Hence my laymans definition of Able to have/do/cause moral and immoral intentions/actions/consequences.
A two-year-old boy points a gun and fatally shoots a girl. Diane Downs (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Downs) points a gun and fatally shoots a girl. Same action, same moral evaluation of the small boy and Diane Downs?
I believe that Aristotle and others in virtue ethics have emphasized the importance of knowledge in morality [long quote from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/)]:
Aristotle makes a number of specific remarks about phronesis that are the subject of much scholarly debate, but the (related) modern concept is best understood by thinking of what the virtuous morally mature adult has that nice children, including nice adolescents, lack. Both the virtuous adult and the nice child have good intentions, but the child is much more prone to mess things up because he is ignorant of what he needs to know in order to do what he intends. A virtuous adult is not, of course, infallible and may also, on occasion, fail to do what she intended to do through lack of knowledge, but only on those occasions on which the lack of knowledge is not culpable ignorance. So, for example, children and adolescents often harm those they intend to benefit either because they do not know how to set about securing the benefit or, more importantly, because their understanding of what is beneficial and harmful is limited and often mistaken. Such ignorance in small children is rarely, if ever culpable, and frequently not in adolescents, but it usually is in adults. Adults are culpable if they mess things up by being thoughtless, insensitive, reckless, impulsive, shortsighted, and by assuming that what suits them will suit everyone instead of taking a more objective viewpoint. They are also, importantly, culpable if their understanding of what is beneficial and harmful is mistaken. It is part of practical wisdom to know how to secure real benefits effectively; those who have practical wisdom will not make the mistake of concealing the hurtful truth from the person who really needs to know it in the belief that they are benefiting him.
I would apply the same analysis to knowledge of right and wrong. (Again, I don't mean some ultimate, perfect moral code, but whatever consensus moral code informs the norms of day-to-day life.) The small boy has not been fully socialized yet and so does not know much about right and wrong. Diane Downs, as an adult of at least normal intelligence, does know the difference.