For example, the best thing to do in situation X might be A. A may be so difficult or require so much sacrifice, that B might be preferable, even if the overall outcome is not as good.
Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but it seems like A is the "commonsense" interpretation of what 'morality' means. I honestly don't know what you mean by B, though. If the overall outcome of B is not as good as A, in what way does it make sense to say we should prefer B?
Further, plenty of contemporary Moral Philosophers deny that "applicability" (I believe the phil-jargon word is "demandingness") has any relevance to morality. See Singer, or better yet, Shelly Kagan's book The Limits of Morality for a more in-depth discussion of this.
I'll make it more explicit with an example: here is a possible moral declaration: "give all your free time to charity". Here is another: "you ought to provide your friend's child with a university education if your friend cannot afford it, but you can, (barely)".
These seem very harsh. Lets consider two scenarios: 1) you can do it, but it would leave you very unhappy and financially or mentally impoverished.
2) you cannot do it, because such demands taken to the logical conclusion results in awful outcomes for you.
If 1, then I suppose th...
One of the criteria moral philosophers use to asses the credibility and power of a moral theory is "applicability". That is, how easy is it for humans to implement a moral rule? For example, a rule exists like "donate 23 hours a day to charity" it would be impossible for humans to fulfill the goal.
This lead me to start thinking about whether we want to be able to to pursue "the moral theoretical truth" should such a truth exist, or if we want to find the most applicable and practical set of rules, such that reasonably intramentaly rational (human) agents could figure out what is best in any given situation.
I feel like this is sort of like a map-territory distinction in a loose way. For example, the best thing to do in situation X might be A. A may be so difficult or require so much sacrifice, that B might be preferable, even if the overall outcome is not as good. This reminds me of how Eliezer says that the map is not the territory, but you can't fold the territory and put it in your pocket.
I'd love to be able to understand this issue a little better. If anyone has any thoughts, ideas or evidence, I'd appreciate hearing them.
Thanks,
Jeremy