The Questions · the self · duty
Is duty built into you?
If duty sits at the foundation, the first person without it breaks the whole account. So the placement is not a detail — it is the thing the theory lives or dies on.
If duty were foundational the theory would shatter on the first sociopath. Placed one floor up, he confirms it.
She reaches. There is no owing in it. Duty comes out clean from the child, the dog and the monster with the self intact each time — so it cannot be foundational.
Structure one floor up — a dial rather than a given.
What this settles
Which is what a foundation is supposed to do under pressure: the hardest case for the claim turns into evidence for it. A two-year-old reaches without owing anybody anything. Remove duty and the self is still there and still running, which puts duty one storey above the ground rather than in it.
Also asked as
- If duty isn't installed at the bottom — if a self can run at zero — then where does it come from?
- Where does the two-year-old's duty come from, when it arrives?
- If it's not foundation and it's not furniture — what is it?
Where this is worked out
Is Duty Built Into You?
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Nothing on this page is composed. Every sentence in the answer is drawn from the pieces listed above. Where a claim is compressed, it is compressed from one of them and adds nothing they do not say.