If a morality isn't a set of rules and regulations that relieves us of the responsibility of estimating the consequences of our actions as long as we follow the right procedures, then what use is it?
I suggest the value of a moral code is not in its rules but in its concepts: what is important about it are the harms and benefits it identifies and what it says nothing about. Those concepts are realised and exemplified in definitions, examples, case law, novels, plays and films, in maxims, slogans, imagery, tones of voice and of course the disciplinary practices of parents, schools, employers, public spaces (from parks to restaurants) and individuals. A moral code is created, modified and kept alive by individuals, not abstractions. Of course, it is a trivial exercise to translate all this into rules and maxims, but just because we can doesn't mean there is any insight to be gained by so doing. Indeed, it's all the other way. If we persist in thinking of morality as principles, we will fail to understand why people behave worse and worse despite exhortations and legislations to make them behave better.
The concepts I'm talking about combine descriptive and evaluative content. The formal evaluative concepts such as 'right', 'wrong', 'good', excellent' and 'better' or 'worse' are not unique to morality. Concepts such as "greed", "charity", "honesty", "caring", "murder", "theft", "busybody", "thoughtfulness", "selfish", "selfless", "ambitious" and a thousand others, describe specific types of behaviour as well as carrying evaluative force. A number of them come in pairs: sharing descriptive content, one has negative and the other positive evaluative content. (This is the basis of the game of Declining Verbs, as in: I am focused, you are single-minded, she is obsessed.) Some languages don't have certain concepts, and their speakers have to import them directly: Yiddish has the concept of a mensch but try translating it into English without losing something essential. You can't. The English don't do being menschen. Middle eastern languages all have a concept of "honour" in the name of which you can commit actions with a clear conscience, actions which Western language-speakers would regard as so awful that they haven't yet wanted to import a word for it.
How do such concepts help us think about moral issues? When we describe a situation using them we get at least one evaluation as a consequence. It's this that affects what we feel because it triggers the release of certain hormones (or stops their release, or of course, does nothing if we don't have those links). The accompanying feelings literally tell is how we feel about the situation and if we are at peace within ourselves when we make moral decisions. Literally, we want to feel good about the decision. If we don't, we try describing it in other ways to see if that works. Or we may hear a description from someone else that make us feel differently, and changes our mind about what we can live with. Morality is properly about feeling, because that's how language has its impact on us: words are linked to feelings via the brain's links with the hormonal system. We are supposed to feel things: that's how we know we can live with the situation. Because we are intelligent, we can change what we feel by thinking: we can and do literally "feel better" about something after discussing it. Those links between the words and hormones are perhaps the best way to understand how our everyday (as opposed to existential) conscience operates. Our mind gives us the facts from the words, and our body tells us what we feel about those facts.
These feelings are messengers, not messages. Just because we feel, say, relief at the some news does not mean we shouldn't act entirely conventionally for the sake of social propriety. When someone has "strong feelings" about a something, that is literally what is happening to them: they are having a strong feeling. You don't argue with feelings, but you can try to change the way the person sees situation, to change, that is, the feelings that get triggered. And that is a delicate process best done with tact, a show of respect for the other person and gentle, non-confrontational language. Which is not easy to do if you are having strong feelings yourself. That's why we employ diplomats and negotiators, that's why some people are persuasive and others just cause more stubbornness.
This is why a moral code is more than just a bunch of dry principles and why moral decision-making is more than an exercise in logic. Emotions are part of how we experience morality and why we react to moral situations the way we do. The connection between words, concepts and emotions are the way that reason and the emotions interplay.
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