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Notes -
I think virtue signaling itself is neutral, it is just communicating a fact about your beliefs to the world. The problems related to virtue signaling are:
If someone has what they believe is a virtue, but it is actually something bad for society.
The virtue signaling competition where people need to come up with more extreme signals to stand out. Then the signal becomes ridiculing the out group in extreme hyperbole that some people can misinterpret as literal.
Per the OP’s book, virtue signaling would not just be communicating a belief but communicating a positive value of yourself to others. And if this is done implicitly, then perhaps we can say that all morality hinges on signaling virtue. If that’s the case, our priority should be fleshing out good competitive parameters and norms for how we judge virtue to maximize moral actions.
In other words, it may be a bad idea to ignore the idea of signaling virtue (as an inherently virtue-less activity), and instead accept it as underlying all morality, in spite of what certain Christian teachings posit, and if develop a great criteria for judging real virtue from false, we would increase sum total virtue.
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