Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
All "moral" means, by your own statement, OldTrees, is "what one ought to do." I assume - and correct me if I am wrong - that there is a hidden component that prevents conflating "you ought to maintain your car so that it doesn't break down" with more traditional conceptions of morality.

Now, most people will assume that you ought to do things to align yourself with "good." Perhaps particularly when alignments are subjective, and you can decide that your ideals are "good" because you say so for yourself.

But for objective morality, this would be a mistake. If your ideals align with a non-good alignment, then you ought to live by that alignment.

Or, put another way, moral behavior brings you in alignment with the moral state you seek to achieve, and immoral behavior drives you away. An evil peraon sees evil as moral. Not because he sees some subjective definition of morality or evil, but because morality is goal-state defined.

In analogy, if you and I sit across the table from each other, and I say that the door is to my left and. Indeed, gesture that direction, you still would see the door as being to your right.

If I am evil and you are good, I will see moral behavior as that which you find immoral. And if we are both honest and correct, we would even agree that both of us are right.

This stems from using "moral" to mean "what you ought to do." The only reason there seems to be contradiction is because of attempts to have it oth mean "what you ought to do" and "good."
I think the issue here is that the ultimate question ("What ought one do?") in the moral theory proposed by OldTrees (and which seems to be a real philosophy, based on his descriptions) is asked in a vacuum, not from the perspective of any person.

You said that the drow priestess's ideals align with the in-universe alignment "Evil". This can be true. You then said she "ought to live by that alignment." And from her perspective, this is true and she will do so.

The issue is that the question "what ought one do?" in OldTrees's moral theory is not asked from her perspective. It is asked in a vacuum, in a white room. In an RPG, it is defined by the GM. So if the GM decides that it is "moral" to follow the in-universe alignment "Good", then the drow priestess is objectively wrong to follow the in-universe alignment "Evil", even though doing so is what she believes she ought to do based on her ideals. Her ideals themselves are objectively wrong under this moral theory. She is mistaken that one ought to be Evil.