(part 2 of two-part response, see below or above for the first)
THat seems to be saying that it is instrumentally in people's interests to be moral. But if that were always straightforwardly the case, then there would be no issues of sacrifices and self-restraint involve in morality, which is scarcely credible.
See this later comment but this one especially (the first is mostly for context) to see that I do indeed take that into account.
The key point is that "morality" isn't straightforwardly "what people want" at all. What people consider moral when they evaluate all the information available to them and what people actually do (even with that information available) are often completely different things.
Note also that context and complicated conditionals become involved in Real Issues™. To throw out a toy example:
Julie might find it moral to kill three humans because she values the author of this post saying "Shenanigans" out loud only a bit less than their lives, and the author has committed to saying it three times out loud for each imaginary person dead in this toy example. However, Jack doesn't want those humans dead, and has credibly signaled that he will be miserable forever if those three people die. Jack also doesn't care about me saying "Shenanigans".
Thus, because Julie cares about Jack's morality (most humans, I assume, have values in their morality for "what other people of my tribe consider moral or wrong"), she will "make a personal sacrifice and use self-restrain" to not kill the three nameless, fortunate toy humans. The naive run of her morality over the immediate results says "Bah! Things could have been more fun.", but game-theoretically she gains an advantage in the long term - Jack now cooperates with her, which means she incurs far less losses overall and still gains some value from her own people-alive moral counter and from Jack's people-alive moral counter as well.
If I lay down my life for my country, that might lead to the greater good, but how good is it for me? The issue is much more complex than you have stated.
I think you are vastly confusing "good", "greater good", and "good for me". These need to be tabooed and reduced. Again, example time:
Tom the toy soldier cares about his life. Tom cares about the lives of his comrades. Tom cares about the continuation of the social system that can be summarized as "his country".
If Tom dies without any reason or effect, this is clearly bad. However, Tom values the end of his country as 1/2 of his life. So far, he's still not going to die for it. Tom also values each comrade life at 1/10th of his life. Still not going to die for his country. Tom also knows that the end of his country means 95% chance that 200 of his comrades will die, with the other 5% they all live. If the country does not end, there's a 50% chance that 100 of his comrades will die anyway, with 50% they live.
If Tom lives, there is 95% chance (as far as Tom knows, to his evidence, etc. etc.) that the country will end. If Tom sacrifices himself, the country is saved (with "certainty", usual disclaimers etc. etc.).
So if Tom lives, Tom's values go to -1/2 plus .95 chance of .95 chance of -20. If Tom sacrifices himself, the currently-alive Tom values this at -1 plus .5 chance of -10. Values are in negative utility only for simplicity of calculation, but this could be described at length in any other system you want (with a bit more effort though).
So the expected utility comes out at -18.55 if Tom lives, and -6 if Tom sacrifices himself, since Tom is a magical toy human and isn't biased in any way and always shuts up and calculates and always knows exactly his own morality. So knowing all of this, Tom lays down his life for his country and what he would think of as "the greater good".
I really don't see how I've excluded this or somehow claimed that all of this was magically whisked away by any of what I said.
Overall, I think the only substantive disagreement we had is in your assessment that I didn't think of / say anything useful towards solving interpersonal moral conflicts (I'm pretty sure I did, but mostly implicitly). I think the issue of what "morality" is for is entirely an empty word problem and should be ignored.
I'll gladly attempt to reduce or taboo for reasonable requests to do so. If you think there are other issues we disagree on, I'd like them to be said. However, I would much appreciate efforts to avoid logical rudeness, and would also greatly appreciate if in further responses you (or anyone else replying) assumed that I haven't thought through this only at the single-tier, naive level without giving this much more than five minutes of thought.
Or, to rephrase positively: Please assume you're speaking to someone who has thought of most of the obvious implications, has thought about this for a very considerable amount of time, has done some careful research, and thinks that this all adds up to normality.
So knowing all of this, Tom lays down his life for his country and what he would think of as "the greater good".
Tom will sacrifice himself if his values lead him too, and not if they don't. He might desert or turn traitor. You would still call that all moral because it is an output of the neurological module you have labelled "moral".
I think the issue of what "morality" is for is entirely an empty word problem and should be ignored.
I think it isn't. If someone tries to persuade you that you are wrong about morality, ...
I think there’s a confusion in our discussions of deontology and consequentialism. I’m writing this post to try to clear up that confusion. First let me say that this post is not about any territorial facts. The issue here is how we use the philosophical terms of art ‘consequentialism’ and ‘deontology’.
The confusion is often stated thusly: “deontological theories are full of injunctions like ‘do not kill’, but they generally provide no (or no interesting) explanations for these injunctions.” There is of course an equivalently confused, though much less common, complaint about consequentialism.
This is confused because the term ‘deontology’ in philosophical jargon picks out a normative ethical theory, while the question ‘how do we know that it is wrong to kill?’ is not a normative but a meta-ethical question. Similarly, consequentialism contains in itself no explanation for why pleasure or utility are morally good, or why consequences should matter to morality at all. Nor does consequentialism/deontology make any claims about how we know moral facts (if there are any). That is also a meta-ethical question.
Some consequentialists and deontologists are also moral realists. Some are not. Some believe in divine commands, some are hedonists. Consequentialists and deontologists in practice always also subscribe to some meta-ethical theory which purports to explain the value of consequences or the source of injunctions. But consequentialism and deontology as such do not. In order to avoid strawmaning either the consequentialist or the deontologist, it’s important to either discuss the comprehensive views of particular ethicists, or to carefully leave aside meta-ethical issues.
This Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article provides a helpful overview of the issues in the consequentialist-deontologist debate, and is careful to distinguish between ethical and meta-ethical concerns.
SEP article on Deontology