Formal Ethics Seed Ontology

This work-in-progress wiki contains a formal ethics ontology as described in some worklogs [1,2] and in this GitHub repo [3]. Concepts in the ontology will be presented in both English and in a formal language (currently SUMO, possibly soon Isabelle). Sometimes, there will also be discussions about the nuances involved in providing a definition.

The hyperlink structure should better represent the class hierarchy of concepts than a linear document. Moreover, precision is sometimes easier to achieve in English than in SUMO where various simplifying determinations need to be made (especially working around an incomplete state of the background theory in codifying the observable universe and the body of human knowledge). Hopefully, AI and autoformalization will help us out with refining the definitions. See On Formal Definitions for a discussion. My goal is to provide an insightful, possibly useful seed ontology that can be improved upon as a proof of concept of the feasibility of denoting what ethics and its paradigms are.

The SUMO in this wiki may not contain all auxiliary definitions, which can be found in the GitHub repo. The current draft is version 4. A good place to start is the entry on Ethics.

Below are some pictures of the class hierarchy from a presentation on the state of the project from AITP23.