AIM Framework glossary
Morality
Canonical definition
Morality is the body of claims about right and wrong as they are ordinarily held and spoken. It is the broader term and Ethics the narrower: every Ethical claim is Moral, and not every Moral claim is Ethical. Where a Moral claim names conduct and the Harm the conduct causes, it is Ethical, and most Moral claims are. Where a Moral claim leaves its Referent, attributing to another Individual a quality of character that no Referent governs or a kind that the Diversity Referent denies, it parts from Ethics: no conduct can satisfy it, conduct revises it only slowly, and the only remedy it leaves acts on the Individual rather than on the conduct. That part is Essentialist Morality.
Explanation
Most of what people call morality is ethics: rules about what people do and the harm it causes. Morality goes further when it stops judging what someone did and starts judging what someone is: evil, a traitor, unclean. Nothing the person does can answer a judgement like that, which is why it ends in action against the person rather than a change in what they do. Morality is the wider word and Ethics the narrower; the part that judges what someone is rather than what they did is Essentialist Morality.
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Construct. Defined from the Ethics–Morality Disjunction, the Self-Model Moral Boundary Principle and the Diversity Referent. No new axioms required.
Derivation
Also in the entry
Distinction from Ethics. Ethics is the part of Morality that keeps its Referent; Essentialist Morality is the part that leaves it. The two coincide wherever a claim names conduct and its Harm and part where a claim leaves the Referent (Ethics–Morality Disjunction). Distinction from the Moral Vocabulary Displacement Principle. Morality is the body of claims. The Moral Vocabulary Displacement Principle states what moral vocabulary does once it has left its Referent downstream of Confabulation: it functions as permission for targeting.