/lit/ - Literature

>>16324313
>>16324301
What is so confusing?
"I ought to not ought" is a prescription prescribing to not prescribe. Thus, it's a contradiction.

For example: I wouldn't prescribe Stephen Hawking to save a drowning victim, since he doesn't even have the ability to save them. But for a normal person who can swim, the story is different. They are unavoidably presented with a choice: to save the victim, or to let the victim drown. Fulfilling either option is possible for them. Thus, that person becomes a moral agent. Regardless of what choice they choose doesn't even matter: what matters is only that they *do* have the choice. They can use whatever beliefs they want to decide which option to go with, but what can't be avoided is that they do have to decide, somehow. Whatever they decide to do could conceivably be justified in some hypothetical moral ideology. I'm not interested in *how* they justify their choice (to let the victim drown, for example), but only in the fact that they did make that choice. They are potentially moral regardless of what they decide to do.

But what happens after that person goes home? What if, due to the stress, they never want to be presented with such a decision ever again? If they cripple their own legs, then they can just avoid moral responsibility next time they see a drowning victim. Without working legs, they won't need to decide what to do in that scenario, and life would be so much morally simpler. Should they choose to cripple their own legs? Should they choose to have fewer "shoulds" in the future? Should they not should ever again?

I believe such a decision would be wrong. To "should away shoulds" is unsustainable. You can only moonshadow yourself so many times until the universe just says enough is enough. I also think there's a logical contradiction in the statement "should ~should", since I'd be prescribing the act of not prescribing.

Conversely, if that person chose to take swimming lessons to become an even better swimmer, then they would face even more choices in the future since now they wouldn't just be choosing whether or not to save a drowning victim who's near the shore, but also drowning victims who are further out in previously-unreachable locations. They would become a greater moral agent. To make the choice to become a better swimmer would be prescribing the act of prescribing. That is not only logically consistent, but the universe also wouldn't stop you. It's both logically and physically sustainable.

>>16324318
I agree that morality is absolute. There is an objective correct choice, and an objective wrong choice.
Killing myself would be an objectively incorrect choice to make.