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Amanojack comments on What is Metaethics? - Less Wrong
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Guilt works here, for example. (But XiXiDu covered that.) Social pressure also. Veiled threat and warning, too. Signaling your virtue to others as well. Moral arguments are so handy that they accomplish all of these in one blow.
ETA: I'm not suggesting that you in particular are trying to guilt trip people, pressure them, threaten them, or signal. I'm saying that those are all possible explanations as to why someone might prefer to couch their arguments in moral terms: it is more persuasive (as Dark Arts) in certain cases. Though I reject moralist language if we are trying to have a clear discussion and get at the truth, I am not against using Dark Arts to convince Bob not to strangle Alice.
Perplexed wrote earlier:
Sometimes you'll want to explain why your punishment of others is justified. If you don't want to engage Perplexed's "moral realism", then either you don't think there's anything universal enough (for humans, or in general) in it to be of explanatory use in the judgments people actually make, or you don't think it's a productive system for manufacturing (disingenuous yet generally persuasive) explanations that will sometimes excuse you.
Assuming I haven't totally lost track of context here, I think I am saying that moral language works for persuasion (partially as Dark Arts), but is not really suitable for intellectual discourse.
Okay. Whatever he hopes is real (but you think is only confused), will allow you to form persuasive arguments to similar people. So it's still worth talking about.