Moral virtue seems to involve certain… inflexibility to incentives.
If someone says “I would organize the genocide of Rohingya if and only if organizing such genocide is profitable, and it so happens that today it would be unprofitable, therefore today I oppose the genocide”, we would typically not call this person moral.
Of course, people usually do not explain their decision algorithms in detail, so the person described above would probably only say “I oppose the genocide”, which would seem quite nice of them.
With most people, we will never know what they would do in a parallel universe, where organizing a genocide could give them a well-paid job. Without evidence to contrary, we usually charitably assume that they would refuse… but of course, perhaps this is unrealistically optimistic.
(This only addresses the objection about “context”. The problem of definition is more complicated.)
Moral virtue seems to involve certain… inflexibility to incentives.
If someone says “I would organize the genocide of Rohingya if and only if organizing such genocide is profitable, and it so happens that today it would be unprofitable, therefore today I oppose the genocide”, we would typically not call this person moral.
Of course, people usually do not explain their decision algorithms in detail, so the person described above would probably only say “I oppose the genocide”, which would seem quite nice of them.
With most people, we will never know what they would do in a parallel universe, where organizing a genocide could give them a well-paid job. Without evidence to contrary, we usually charitably assume that they would refuse… but of course, perhaps this is unrealistically optimistic.
(This only addresses the objection about “context”. The problem of definition is more complicated.)