Evil

[Mudhammam]

It's not so much revolting as it useless. An exhaustive list of what is moral, immoral or neither is arbitrary. If that is all morality is, then it might as well be blue, red and yellow actions. Morality isn't about truth, it's about judgement. Or at least, it should be.

My definition of personal morality is studying the consequences of actions. If the objective morality tells me that rape is moral, why should I care? What use is that?

People will say rape can't be on the moral list, because it is immoral. But how do we determine it is immoral? Through consequences.

We may be talking about two entirely different uses of the word "morality". To begin with, we can't possibly agree on what is moral until we agree on what is important. For example, if I say human life is not important, we are screwed. How exactly do you determine who is right, objectively? Neither of us are.

I don't think we really disagree much. You seem to assume that morality is objective. For, on the one hand, by stressing the importance of utility (or lack thereof) in defining what objective morality means, you equivocate on the word "useful," as all you mean by it is "good." But, if I may ask, for whom do you mean by asking if some action is useful? You alone? Well, probably not. I suspect that you do not think it matters little whether or not what you judge to be right or wrong (i.e. useful or not) is viewed by others to be true, if you're confident that your reasoning of a given topic or situation is sound. Yet, on the other hand, could not there be actions that might be personally useful, but not right, in principle? Likewise, could not they be quite useless for you and yet be the right thing to do? Contrarily, the same reasoning could apply to one's actions vis-à-vis society at large, useful or useless for them and the opposite for others that might be effected. And without admitting an aim towards objectivity in your study of consequences - presumably with the intent of making right or wrong judgments about them, i.e. whether they are useful to yourself, to others, or simply right because of other reasons - how do you even proceed? After all, subjective morality implies that judgments only boil down to your opinion in the first place, does it not? Is your judgment going to be right because you rightly judge yourself to make right judgments? What would it mean to be wrong in a judgment? In your example about non-consensual intercourse, I would certainly care to know if there were any instances in which it was morally justifiable - we do put rapists in cages, and it would be outrageous if we had misjudged either the consequences that result or the principles by which we ought(?) to be guided in our treatment of others.