Moral Oughts

[Acrobat]

Yes, judgment is a duty, but only if you have made the choice to live.  It's a self-imposed duty.  Nature doesn't force you to judge or to live, it's a choice.

Good and Bad seem to be like color. To recognize that stealing is bad, is more like recognizing that stealing is yellow, than deciding what color I should color stealing. I see yellow not because reality forces me to see yellow, rather because it is yellow. If I wanted to close my eyes and refuse to see that x is yellow, I could.

One of the properties of this moral color (good) is that it carried with it some compelling quality of I ought to do it, and the color of badness as something I ought not do. If good is like light, then it’s a direction I ought to move towards, and badness is like darkness, it’s a directions I should move away from.

Now I don’t know about you, but I grew up poor, and in bad part of town, and done a lot of things that where bad, stolen things and stuff.

Even in the act of stealing, I was fully aware that what I was doing is wrong, and that i ought not do it, as liking a breaking of an obligation.

I recognized that as a truth, a fundamental truth, and not as like societies, my family, community, friends, would disprove of my actions, or be disappointed by them. Or some rule that I made for myself

It also doesn’t seem to be the case that this was something I was indoctrinated into believing. If I tried to say to myself this is just some indoctrinated false belief, or that it’s a thing of my own creation, I would just be lying to myself, like trying to convince myself the earth is flat.

I don’t know about your insistence on a choice to live, but this perception wouldn’t have changed if I made the choice to die or commit suicide instead, anymore so that I’d believe that 1+1=5, in welcoming death.

"When I judge something my friend did as bad, I'm saying it's something he ought not to have done." *if he wants to live and have a good life*

And if he said I wanted to have a bad life, we’d tell him that ain’t right, you ought to want a good life.

Wittgenstein:

“ But this is not how Ethics uses them.

Supposing that I could play tennis and one of you saw me playing and said "Well, you play pretty badly" and suppose I answered "I know, I'm playing badly but I don't want to play any better," all the other man could say would be "Ah then that's all right."

But suppose I had told one of you a preposterous lie and he came up to me and said "You're behaving like a beast" and then I were to say "I know I behave badly, but then I don't want to behave any better," could he then say "Ah, then that's all right"?

Certainly not; he would say "Well, you ought to want to behave better."
Here you have an absolute judgment of value, whereas the first instance was one of a relative judgment.