. . . Moral valuing is about nothing less than valuing or disvaluing particular behaviors, either in isolation or as part of a continuum of activity we may undertake. And moral questions look like questions concerning what we should or should not do under certain circumstances . . . questions which go beyond the issue of what pleases us at this, or some future, moment. If it were just a matter of doing what pleases us, then, indeed, no action we can imagine could qualify as moral under the usual interpretation of that word. If we do what we do for our own benefit, for our advancement, for our pleasure, etc., then however moral a particular action may look to an outsider, lacking access to our motives, we would not as observers, if given sufficient information about the true motives behind it to recognize it as self-interested, agree that it was morally done.

Setting aside for the moment the notion that even actions unmotivated by a moral decision may have a good effect and may thus be deemed praiseworthy at some level, the realization that one chose the action in question for a non-moral, perhaps even an immoral, reason would fatally undermine its apparent praiseworthiness to any moral observer . . .