Converted is me

[ninja_prophet]

I've been a consequentialist (of sorts) for quite some time now - I think that any moral terms must be ascribed after the fact, in light of the consequences brought about. Expectations for such consequences can be used to predict things, and such predictions as made by individuals (informally known as "intentions") can be used to assess people in

Comments

[ninja_prophet]

Wow, that's actually pretty apt. There's more to it than that, but I would agree with everything you said. 1 is spot-on, 2 has the general idea, and 3 is close enough. Look, it's tweaking time! 1. We make up our own codes of morals, much as language is made-up (just as you said).
2. Morality still has plenty of use (it's a shift in emphasis, but important enough that I think it bears mentioning).
3. Make your own choices (with some foresight and planning) and deal with the outcomes (with patience and an attitude of learning).
3.5. (This is hard, but it will make your life better.)
4. I think the descriptivity/prescriptivity thing ought to figure in somehow, as well. If you talk a good game about the "is" of morality, you're going to lose the "oomph" for a lot of people; if you try to keep the "oomph" in morality, you'll disagree over the "is" with a lot of people*.
5. Even though everyone's going to come up with their own code, we should also have a code that everyone can agree on, for things like public policy and whatnot, because then we can dispense with the mystical hoo-ha and talk in agreed-upon terms.
6. Consequentialism - specifically, Utilitarianism (and, yeah, a specific variant thereof) - is the best candidate for this because it focuses on outcomes in terms of human happiness, which I'm pretty sure is what we all want, anyway.
* - A lot of people think that the objection "That's just wrong," if true, should trump other concerns - but explaining how something is wrong gives people the opening to disagree with your explanation, and the argument will ultimately degenerate to table-pounding. In other words, people generally agree that moral concerns trump other concerns, but disagree over just how to hash out those moral concerns - but once you hash that out, you'll no longer be able to trump the other concerns (for other people), because you're pitting your emotionally-laden values against another person's different values, and these sets are probably divergent by virtue of the fact that you're having the dispute.