Was it our intellectually piercing dialectic, or were they just bored with what they were doing?

Our conversation became so spectacular, that they couldn’t help themselves but join in (;

the goodness or badness of the will is a direct reflection on the worthiness of being content with one’s subjective condition, which is commonly called being happy, which is itself the prime condition for moral integrity

I understand that you are claiming that being worthy of happiness is directly related to having a good will; but I am asking what makes a will good?

The one willing an act in defiance of his principles would post hoc evaluate his will as bad, earning himself the title of immoral.

But what, under your view, makes those principles right? Someone, surely, can will in accordance with their principles, thereby gaining at least a shallow sense of happiness, without willing in accordance with what is right.

No. I don't think you are following. I don't accept there are objective goods (your term). Society engages in an ongoing conversation about a 'code of conduct' and who counts as a citizen - this evolves and is subject to changes over time. Hence gay people are now citizens (in the West), whereas some years ago they were criminals.

1. Then, you are a moral anti-realist; and no one should take your view seriously; because all you are saying is that what is right or wrong is stance-dependent. So if, e.g., I want to do something you consider wrong, or others consider wrong, then there is absolutely no fact-of-the-matter that makes me wrong: I am just as right as you are (objectively speaking).

2. One can accept that there are objective goods AND that society is a power-related structure. The idea that some people are exhalted as heroes and those very same people criminals by others just highlights that humans are creating laws; and does not negate the fact that humans should be creating laws which abide by facticity. Under your view, those laws are non-factual; because there are no moral facts.

Our conversation became so spectacular, that they couldn’t help themselves — Bob Ross

Exactly the way I see it. Which makes….you know….two of us.

I am asking what makes a will good? — Bob Ross

I’m a fan of metaphysical reductionism, that is, reduce propositions to the lowest form of principles which suffice to ground the conceptions represented in the propositions, and, justify the relation of those conceptions to each other. Which is fine, but comes with the inherent danger of reducing beyond such justifications, often into relations irrational on the one hand and not even possible on the other, from the propositions themselves. The proverbial transcendental illusion, the only way out of which, is just don’t reduce further than needed.

And this is what happens when asking what makes a will good. If whatever makes the will good, can be represented as merely some necessary presupposition, it doesn’t matter what specifically is the case. It is enough to comprehend with apodeitic certainty that it is possible for there to be a root of what good is, hence it is non-contradictory, hence possibly true, the will just is the case. This is where it is proper for the common understanding to rest assured.

After having desolved the question of what makes a will good, it remains to be determined at least the conditions by which the possibility of its being good in itself, is given, which is the domain of the philosopher of metaphysics. These conditions are evidenced, and the case that there is such a thing as a will that is good in itself obtains, by the relevant activities of humanity in general, evil being the exception to the rule.

It is impossible to determine what it is exactly that makes the will good, for the simple reason it is impossible to determine exactly what the will is, which makes any scientific use of the principle of cause and effect in its empirical form useless. Best the metaphysician can do, is attribute certain rational constructs to the idea of a will, sufficient to explain man’s relevant activities, then speculate on the more parsimonious, the most logical, method by which those constructs originate, from which, as it so happens, arises Kantian transcendental logic.

That logic, then, while saying nothing about what makes a will good, is quite specific in a purely speculative fashion, with respect to the principles enabling the will to be that which is directly that faculty responsible for making the man a good man, by his proper use of it, and to whom is attributed moral agency.

The transcendental necessary presupposition: there is no good, in, of and for itself, other than the good will.
The form of transcendental principles: maxims, imperatives.
The transcendental logic’s original constructs: freedom, and autonomy.
————-

Right has nothing to do with good, but only with a good, or the good.

Anyway….food for thought. Or confusion. Take your pick.