Maximizing Moral Virtue

[bennyboy]

Without God, then a sense of goodness must be an instinct-- otherwise we'd have no concept of it at all.

Therefore, moral values are those which lead to circumstances which feel good. 

Doesn't follow with or without a god, but it is nice to get the assist from natural compulsions...when natural compulsions aren't the thing telling you to curstomp the neighbors kid, ofc.  

I feel guilty when I harm others, and good when I help them, so I consider helping people moral, and hurting them immoral.  I feel good when my wife and children are happy and healthy, and bad when they are unhappy or unhealthy-- so things which will lead to their happiness and health are good.

Sounds healthy as shit.  Imagine if you felt bad when your wife and children were happy.  Would that make your wife and child being happy.....bad?  Similarly, if some other parent passed judgement on you for doing some bad thing you were calling good, on account of it making you feel good, is this where the system of classification breaks down?

As an aside, let me remind you that if'n you don't curbstomp the neighbor's kid when he's askin' for it, he ain't never gonna learn nuthin'.  At least YOU care enough about him to do it, unlike his daddy who done run off with the family pickup and that whore Debbie from the next trailer over.

I'm assuming an evolutionary motivational mechanism here-- that instincts tend toward genetic fitness.  A baby's not intrinsically cute, but enough people say "Squeee" when they see a baby that it's relatively hard for baby-spiking hobbyists to get to babies.

This has its problems too, though.  People who don't know how Google works think "Squeee" when they think about an embryo, even though in reality it's really not squee-worthy until about 9 months after conception.

That's why pro-lifers hate pro-choicers.  Nobody wants to imagine a scalpel and a vacuum cleaner when they're halfway through a good "Squee" about an imaginary baby-that-is-not-yet.