AIM Framework glossary
Ethics–Morality Disjunction
Canonical definition
The Ethics–Morality Disjunction is the result that Ethics and Morality, which share most of their vocabulary and content, coincide wherever a claim names conduct and the Harm, or rate of Harm, that the conduct causes, so that the claim has a Referent with which the Individual it addresses can comply and against which the claim can be revised; and part where a claim leaves its Referent in favour of attributing against another Individual, or against a group, vocabulary that no Referent licenses: a quality of character that no Referent governs and no conduct could discharge, or a kind that the Diversity Referent denies. A claim on the Ethical side is the content of a rule under the Rule–Referent Principle. A claim of Essentialist Morality is the output of Self-Model Inversion, and because no conduct can satisfy it, the only remedy it licenses acts on the Individual rather than on the conduct, which is why such vocabulary functions as permission for targeting. The disjunction lies in the function of a claim, not in its words: the same sentence is Ethical where a Referent would revise it and Essentialist Morality where it names none.
Explanation
Most of what people call morality is also ethics: don't kill, don't steal, don't lie. Each names something you can do or refrain from doing and the harm it causes, so you can comply, and anyone can check whether the harm is real. The two part company when a claim stops being about what someone did and becomes about what someone is: evil, a traitor, the kind of person who deserves what is coming. There is nothing that person could do to satisfy a claim like that, because it is not about anything they did, so the only thing it leaves open is action against the person. That is the point where moral language becomes a licence to target. The same holds, and more plainly, when the target is a whole group: people do not come in natural kinds, so no fact could justify targeting someone for belonging to one, and the fact that does exist says the kind is not there. The words do not tell you which side you are on, because the same sentence can be either. The test is whether some fact would make the speaker take it back, and whether the person accused could put it right by changing what they do.
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Principle. Synthesis of the Rule–Referent Principle, the Self-Model Moral Boundary Principle, the Moral Vocabulary Displacement Principle and the Diversity Referent. No new axioms required.