Maximizing Moral Virtue

[Ahriman]

Morality and pleasure are intimately linked. Doing good for oneself, maximizing pleasure.......that's morality.

It's one theory.  Pure hedonism.  If it feels good, do it.  I don't think it's your moral system, though.  For example..say your dad doesn't want to give you any more money, because he doesn't like to.  Or, maybe, because he enjoys watching you suffer?  Or perhaps some guy likes guys so he does guys.

Each one, good, according to the above.

Getting high and sleeping with men is very moral, I'm making those men feel really good. And hedonism very much is my moral system, I only do things that don't feel good if I absolutely have to. I walk to the store every day, which is something I would rather not do, because if I had a car, I would never walk to the store again. Sometimes real life gets in the way of your principles.

[The Grand Nudger]

Hedonism is more about making you feel good, not so much the other guy. Ostensibly, doing things that make other people happy might cause you to feel bad, and so, fail at the primary aim of pure hedonism.

You'd rather not walk to the store, and I'd rather not have to drive to the store - but neither of these things is, at first glance, an item of moral import or an expression of any particular moral system. Examples such as these are why pure hedonism is questioned as a moral system at all. Doing things because they feel good (to you, or to someone else) is a thing, but may not be the same thing as doing things for moral reasons. Thus, maximizing pleasure may not maximize virtue.

To turn hedonism into something moral, people generally add the modifer "ethical hedonism" - but this..ofc, shows that there's ethics being applied to hedonism...and whatever that was, would be the actual moral system involved.

[Ahriman]

Hedonism is more about making you feel good, not so much the other guy.  Ostensibly, doing things that make other people happy might cause you to feel bad, and so, fail at the primary aim of pure hedonism.

You'd rather not walk to the store, and I'd rather not have to drive to the store - but neither of these things is, at first glance, an item of moral import or an expression of any particular moral system.  Examples such as these are why pure hedonism is questioned as a moral system at all.  Doing things because they feel good (to you, or to someone else) is a thing, but may not be the same thing as doing things for moral reasons.  Thus, maximizing pleasure may not maximize virtue.

To turn hedonism into something moral, people generally add the modifer "ethical hedonism" - but this..ofc, shows that there's ethics being applied to hedonism...and whatever that was, would be the actual moral system involved.

It's obvious that your "morality" and my "morality" are two fundamentally different things, I mean totally different. We're not speaking the same language. I don't want or need to be philosophical about this subject. If I make someone feel good, I've done a good thing. If I make myself feel good, even better. That's as far as I fathom it out. This is why I never feel bad after playing with myself, or playing with someone else. It's all pleasure. It's all good. It's all justified. I'm not concerned with hedonism possibly not being a legitimate moral system.

[The Grand Nudger]

Nor should you be, if the aim is pleasure then a pleasure system is a better fit than a moral system. However, the rest of us are discussing how me might maximize moral virtue. So, we're talking about moral systems.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

No, that's unhealthy egocentrism.

Boru

A self-defeating attitude.

Your face is a self-defeating attitude.

Boru

[Fake Messiah]

But what about this problem: let's say that you believe that God exists and that only he commands what is moral and what is immoral, is it not then completely ridiculous to rely on the Bible on what he said is moral?

I say that because most of the "moral" commands come from Exodus and Deuteronomy which were given to Moses and his people a long time ago, but Moses never existed. So that means that, if you are a believer, you believe that God whispered to some people in the past what is moral and then they created a moral fairytale that included those moral commands and dictated them to scribes who copied them for generations into the books in the Bible.

You would think that if God exists and his moral laws are important that he would present them in a more serious fashion than as a fairytale created and copied by primitive anonymous people in a dubious book.

[The Grand Nudger]

Does it actually matter whether we trust in the reliability of magic book to tell us what god commands? The thing about moral claims, is that their purported issuer and accuracy of transmission is irrelevant to the truth of the moral claim. Lets say I make some moral claim, and it's true. I tell it to john, who tells it to sally, who tells it to phil - so on and so forth. The garbled version that we end up with is not true. Does that garbled claim being untrue make my true claim untrue? Let's say I make some moral claim, and it's false. This time, I skip the middlemen - and accurately relate this moral claim myself. Does this make the false moral claim true?

True and false claims can be accurately and inaccurately transmitted, personally and successively communicated. No belief one way or the other about either issue certifies or suggests that a given moral claim is true, or false.

More fundamentally, no given issuer transmitting a true or false claim certifies that the claim is a moral claim. Moral claims are not "those claims that come from John". Moral claims are those claims which purport to comment on right and wrong behavior. Goodness and badness of character. Claims which could answer the question of why we should (or shouldn't) do whatever might fall from Johns lips. John says "every tuesday is now taco tuesday!" Well, okay John...is there a moral angle to this..or?

[Fake Messiah]

Does it actually matter whether we trust in the reliability of magic book to tell us what god commands? 

Well, if something must be a certain way solely because one person (God) commands it, then it would need to have very good credibility that it really came from him. This way it might have come from him but was changed through centuries of oral re-telling or just completely made up.

The thing about moral claims, is that their purported issuer and accuracy of transmission is irrelevant to the truth of the moral claim.

But this is not what believers in the so-called objective morality from the Bible claim. They claim that something is good or bad simply because God says it is that way, and not if it makes sense or not.

[Ahriman]

But this is not what believers in the so-called objective morality from the Bible claim. They claim that something is good or bad simply because God says it is that way, and not if it makes sense or not.

Nothing will ever make perfect sense. Better to follow the rules of an omnipotent entity.

[The Grand Nudger]

Well, if something must be a certain way solely because one person (God) commands it, then it would need to have very good credibility that it really came from him. This way it might have come from him but was changed through centuries of oral re-telling or just completely made up.

Possessing certainty that a message originates with you answers the question of who the message came from - but not whether the message is of moral import or even further.... is, in fact, moral.  

But this is not what believers in the so-called objective morality from the Bible claim. They claim that something is good or bad simply because God says it is that way, and not if it makes sense or not.

That would be a subjective morality, not objective morality, assuming it was morality at all.  This is one of the easiest beliefs to discard when discussing whether or not there are realist ethics to maximize - because you can simply concede that when you use the term morality you are not referring to what a subject may or may not say or feel or command - but what is or is not good or bad about that thing itself.  If they like they can keep the word morality and you can use fleflarp - it really doesn't matter what terms are used.  You can concede that maximizing compliance with subjective normative statements is a thing, but not the thing you're talking about when considering maximizing moral virtue.  Or you can say that maximizing moral virtue is a thing, but not what you're talking about when considering fleflarp virtue.

Ultimately, I think you'll find that the faithful are just as compelled to reach into the fleflarp column as anyone else. That good is what god commands, and what god commands is good - are not interchangeable statements. It may be for their lack of rhetorical skill or conceptual grounding (or yours, or both) that the former seems like the latter. I think this is one where the rough shape of the misperception on either end has a good sociological explanation. There are people who believe - first, that their god is wholly good. Those people appear to weight fealty as-a-virtue higher than people who do not hold such a belief. With these two beliefs in mind, and confronted with a difficult to reconcile text - the notion that whatever god commanded is good is an expression of frustration. They don't know how, but they know there must be mitigating circumstances, and to seriously consider otherwise would be disloyal - to boot.

Consider the many..many...many posts on this board from the faithful swirling exactly that drain.