Coulda Woulda Shoulda
Does "Could" Lead to Good? Toward a Theory of Moral Insight
Working Knowledge
When we’re faced with an immediate moral dilemma, most of us are so thrown off that we’re not exactly able to think in complete sentences. Once we’ve pulled ourselves together and we’re thinking more rationally, though, chances are we’ll ask ourselves something like “What should I do?” But there are advantages to making a one-word change to that question, turning it into “What could I do?” That’s because one of the difficulties of moral dilemmas is that they appear to force us to pick one path or another; the simple substitution of “could” allows us to think more expansively about possible solutions.