Preferences of this sort might be interesting not because they describe what their holders will do themselves, but because they describe what their holders will try to get other people to do. I might think that diverting funds from luxury purchases to starving Africans is always morally good but not care enough (or not have enough moral backbone, or whatever) to divert much of my own money that way—but I might e.g. consistently vote for politicians who do, or choose friends who do, or argue for doing it, or something.
Nope. Real human beings are hypocrites, to some extent, pretty much all the time.
But holding a moral value and being hypocritical about it is different from not holding it at all, so I don’t think it’s correct to say that moral values held hypocritically are uninteresting or meaningless or anything like that.
Preferences of this sort might be interesting not because they describe what their holders will do themselves, but because they describe what their holders will try to get other people to do. I might think that diverting funds from luxury purchases to starving Africans is always morally good but not care enough (or not have enough moral backbone, or whatever) to divert much of my own money that way—but I might e.g. consistently vote for politicians who do, or choose friends who do, or argue for doing it, or something.
Your comment reads to me like a perfect description of hypocrisy. Am I missing something?
Nope. Real human beings are hypocrites, to some extent, pretty much all the time.
But holding a moral value and being hypocritical about it is different from not holding it at all, so I don’t think it’s correct to say that moral values held hypocritically are uninteresting or meaningless or anything like that.