AIM Framework glossary
Ethics
Canonical definition
Ethics is the body of claims about conduct that name the conduct and the Harm, or rate of Harm, that it causes, so that each claim has a Referent with which the Individual it addresses can comply and against which the claim can be revised. An Ethical claim is the content of a rule under the Rule–Referent Principle. Whether a claim is Ethical is a property of what the claim does and not of its words: a claim is Ethical where some fact about the conduct and its Harm would lead the Individual who holds it to revise it.
Explanation
Ethics is about what people do and the harm it causes. "Don't steal" is ethical: it names something you can refrain from, and anyone can check the harm. Because an ethical claim is about conduct, the person it addresses can meet it, and because it is about harm, it can be corrected when the facts about the harm change. Most of what is called morality is ethics in this sense.
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Construct. Defined from the Rule–Referent Principle, Referent and Harm. No new axioms required.
Derivation
Also in the entry
Distinction from Morality. Morality is the broader term and Ethics the narrower. Morality includes every Ethical claim and also the claims of Essentialist Morality, which have left their Referent; Ethics is the part of Morality that keeps the Referent (Ethics–Morality Disjunction).