Maximizing Moral Virtue

[The Grand Nudger]

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.

You could also follow your parents rules, my rules, or the housecats rules.  Maximizing moral virtue is specifically about following moral rules, however.

Do you think it would also be "better" to follow an omnipotent gods rules, rather than whatever hedonistic impulse you have at a given moment?

[Ahriman]

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

You could also follow your parents rules, my rules, or the housecats rules.  Maximizing moral virtue is specifically about following moral rules, however.

Do you think it would also be "better" to follow an omnipotent gods rules, rather than whatever hedonistic impulse you have at a given moment?

Actually yes I do think it would be better but I'm not capable of following God's rules.

[The Grand Nudger]

There we go, the mere possibility of moral import presents itself.

Why would it be better?

[Fake Messiah]

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.

I am not exactly sure what you are trying to say, but when they say "Gay people and gay marriage are bad because God says so in the Bible" they believe that this is an objective morality that is beyond their wishes and decisions.

Now, you could argue that they are deluding themselves for many reasons, one of which is that they choose which God's commandments they will follow either by pick-and-choose method or just mental gymnastics, but that doesn't matter in the point that I am trying to make which is the claim that it comes from God (Bible) when it actually comes from some dubious anonymous people somewhere in the past who related it to us by a very flawed method.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

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

You could also follow your parents rules, my rules, or the housecats rules.  Maximizing moral virtue is specifically about following moral rules, however.

Do you think it would also be "better" to follow an omnipotent gods rules, rather than whatever hedonistic impulse you have at a given moment?

The trouble is that personal hedonism necessarily fails to maximize moral virtue further than as it applies to the personal hedonist, by the very act of following the rules of hedonism. On a metric that includes even one additional moral agent, it actually minimizes moral virtue.

And I remain unconvinced that hedonism in the sense expressed by Ari (‘What feels good to me is all that matters’) even qualifies as a moral system at all.

Boru

[Ahriman]

There we go, the mere possibility of moral import presents itself.

Why would it be better?

I would live a happier and more disciplined life.

[The Grand Nudger]

I am not exactly sure what you are trying to say, but when they say "Gay people and gay marriage are bad because God says so in the Bible" they believe that this is an objective morality that is beyond their wishes and decisions.

If they believe that Teh Gay is objectively bad, then they do not believe Teh Gay is bad because god says so.  They believe that something about Teh Gay is bad.  They're unlikely to be shy about telling you just what that is.  

Now, you could argue that they are deluding themselves for many reasons, one of which is that they choose which God's commandments they will follow either by pick-and-choose method or just mental gymnastics, but that doesn't matter in the point that I am trying to make which is the claim that it comes from God (Bible) when it actually comes from some dubious anonymous people somewhere in the past who related it to us by a very flawed method.

Whether a purportedly objective moral claim comes from a god, dubious people, or a bathroom stall is completely irrelevant to whether or not the claim is, in fact, true. Whether the x a claim surrounds can be said to increase moral virtue.

[The Grand Nudger]

There we go, the mere possibility of moral import presents itself.

Why would it be better?

I would live a happier and more disciplined life.

A utilitarian outcome.  If doing a bad thing, rather than whatever god says, lead to a happier and more disciplined life..would it be better to do bad than to do good or what god says?

[bennyboy]

Not if the opponent's terms are themselves dishonest.

I'm perfectly capable of detailing a pro-lifer's argument in their terms.  However, since pro-lifers' terms are, in my estimation, couched to bypass rational argument rather than to engage in it, then accepting them at face value means either carrying on a farcical debate, or choosing not to have one at all.

I guess we've heard different arguments.

Fine.  I shall demonstrate.

Pro-choice: "Abortionists want to kill innocent babies.  How cruel this is-- this baby has as much right to life as anyone else.  Nobody forced a girl to get pregnant, and she should have thought about pregnancy instead of having sex.  And EVEN IF she was forced, aka raped, how cruel it is to murder an innocent little baby instead of just carrying it for a few months and giving it up for adoption to parents who will treat it with the love it deserves."

This is, "in my estimation, couched to bypass rational argument rather than to engage in it," because it uses very deliberate symbolism (specifically, the repeated use of the word "baby") to conflate this:


with this:


The important difference is that the first picture represents a developing human body with no capacity for suffering and no conscious awareness.  The second is a young human being with a name who has bonded with other people, cries when it's scared (because it can process and form ideas about its environment), and is busy formulating a network of ideas about the things it interacts with.

So why do pro-lifers do this? Because if your position is "I cannot tolerate the destruction of a group of cells with no capacity for suffering and no conscious awareness," you do not trigger the "Squeeeeeee" response that brings people over to your cause.

I would argue that deliberately triggering people's instinctive responses to X, by invoking imagined images of Not-X, is immoral.

[Belacqua]

The important difference is that the first picture represents a developing human body with no capacity for suffering and no conscious awareness.  The second is a young human being with a name who has bonded with other people, cries when it's scared (because it can process and form ideas about its environment), and is busy formulating a network of ideas about the things it interacts with.

Yes, I think your opinion is one that many people hold. 

In your view (as I understand it), there is some kind of ontological change (from non-human to human, from non-murderable to murderable) when the thing in question develops the ability to suffer and have conscious awareness. 

You don't really give a reason why this is so. Nor do you give a fair account of the reasons why many people who disagree with you (e.g. Aristotelians or Thomists) think that the ontological change occurs earlier. 

The second photo shows something adorable, and the first doesn't. But, as you say, it would not be a good argument to rely on people's instinctive responses to the differences in appearance.