Does feeling a moral emotion less intensely mean you are less moral?
Does feeling a moral emotion less intensely mean you have different values?
Does feeling a moral emotion less intensely mean you care less about the moral issues that engage the emotion?
Does feeling a moral emotion less intensely make one less effective at addressing the moral issues engaged by the emotion? That is, fixing the world so that it lines up with the emotion’s moral imperative: this must be so!
The Moral Good is what the moral emotion wants. The Moral Good is an outcome, a thing that happens in the world.
A moral emotion wants something to happen. What if the things it wants to happen are in a zero-sum relationship with each other? More of this means less of that and both this and that are Moral Goods. But you can’t have the optimal amount of both. You gotta choose what gets more: this or that? (And keep choosing, because time doesn't stop and stuff keeps happening).
A moral emotion exists within a community of moral emotions. They don’t always get along. How do you resolve their conflicts?
How does the moral imperative accommodate the time horizon? Do you have to shift out of the feeling state to think hard about the matter? (Or at least turn down the volume a notch or two?)
Is achieving some of the Moral Good now better than achieving more of the Moral Good later? Given that increasingly later is increasingly uncertain, at what point of later/uncertainty should the consideration of the temporal trade-offs stop and you commit to action? (The answer, as always: it depends).
What I’m getting at: feelings don't impress me; results do. Strong emotion gets in the way of hard thinking. When it comes to public policy and legislation, compassion serves best when put on ice. And moral outrage is left at the door.
(Note: this is my brain on a glass of wine. Being a small person, it doesn't take much to get the ol' juices going.)