Veritas,
You still need a definition that is 'formal'. You cannot use "morality is
about...." as a formal definition. That hints at what it may involve but needs something of the genus-specie type to be clear.
"
Morality" is (the set of beliefs one or more people hold) that (describes what they believe
should (or
ought-to) do in light of given conditions and options.)
That is just one I made up now. The 'genus' would be the
general class of things that something belongs to. The
species would be the specific factors that differentiate between other things of the same general class.
With that kind of definition you can then expand upon what it entails with examples.
"For example, given that you overhear one of your best friends speak about robbing a bank [condition], what
should you do?[consequent]."
Narrowing the options to these, if these were the only possible things you could do, which option is optimal?
(1) Do nothing and pretend you didn't hear.
(2) Call the police and let them know what you heard.
(3) Confront your friend to determine if what you heard was literally true.
(4) Blackmail her to share the wealth.
The topic is usually in the domain of Sociology, Psychology, or variations of the two, like "Interpersonal Relationships" or "Social Psychology". At least they all relate to the general class of 'sociology' and/or 'social studies' of some sort. This means that the subject itself is inexact and hard to be comparable to an exact science like physics or chemistry. But if you wanted to try that, then you might want to look into something like Artificial Intelligence and computing (since the act of decision making on the
hard physical level may demonstrate how something purely logical can lead to some specific set of 'moral' constructs of behavior.)
I proposed to you "windows of development" before, something that to me DEFINES what we will interpret as 'good', 'comfortable' and 'pleasant' things. Those you want to avoid are their evaluative complements.
For example, see this article:
Your Baby's Brain: Critical Window of Opportunity
Although that particular one may not directly discuss morals, it does discuss how a baby develops behaviors that get 'assigned' value.
Another idea to look up, but somewhat demonstrates why I would doubt morals have any universally specific consequences, might be "the Trolley thought experiments. See
Trolley Problem. These may not be what you might agree to but could hint at how you could demonstrate how to narrow down problems to specific possible options that
may hide something you could determine universally within them. Moral problems do tend to come up in these kinds of dilemmas.
I'm not sure that I can help much further at present because I too once thought that there had to be something universally and unequivocally 'virtuous' of behavior across any possible options. I'm not so hopeful now because I see it come down to 'politics' that have only conditional benefits AND drawbacks to every action because you cannot please everyone all the time without someone somewhere requiring to sacrifice their own comforts.
Is it 'right' to use a gun on someone who breaks into your house if you are not aware of who they are or whether they too have a gun or some other weapon?
You might say, yes. But then you discover that your neighbor's kid was shot by his parent when sneaking in at night through a window. For all we know this was a convenient set up that a homicidal parent planned for some reaso or another.
This is a complex subject area that has been discussed and debated through time. You need to look at those who ARE religious to see what reasoning they used to justify religious moral laws, like the Ten Commandments.
I hope this helps.??