Wiki Map

This page steps you through the content of the Wiki. The code is on GItHub.

One can begin with the definition of ethics:

Ethics is the philosophy of the judgments of the conduct, character, or circumstances of agential beings living in a society, which judges them to be right or wrong, to be good or bad, or in some similar way, and is used to guide the actions of the agents in the society.

Next, there are the major paradigms of how to do ethics and some sub-paradigms:

• Deontology
• Virtue Ethics
  • Target-Centered Virtue Ethics
• Consequentialism
• Utilittarianism
  • Consequentitalist Utilitarianism
  • Hedonistic Utilitarianism
• Moral Nihilism

See Theory Examples for some examples of how theories may look within these paradigms.

Some background theory is included to support the primary definitions. Many concepts are partially defined in SUMO’s knowledge base.

• Ethical Theory
  • Justified Theory
• Choice Point
  • Moral Dilemma
• Values
• Relevance
• Similarity
• Situation

I’ve included some discussion of the nature of formal definitions to help understand the nuances involved in the project of formalizing (practical) philosophy. One can approach the paradigms from the place of teleological definitions for a less formalistic approach.

Many debates in ethical philosophy are over certain ethical conjectures, such as the existence of normative ethical theories. I’ve added my own on the equivalence of the major ethical paradigms.

Some especially interesting work in formal or computational ethics is lightly covered:

• Alan Gewirth’s Proof for the Principle of Generic Consistency
• The ETHICS Benchmark aims to cover generally agreed-upon ethical judgments.

I’ve included my own personal moral stance, which I hope helps to keep the rest of the wiki more stance-neutral. There’s also a page discussing my personal motivations for this project. The two worklogs [1, 2] I publshed to my blog may provide additional philosophical context or insights for the interested reader. I also gave a presentation on the project at AITP ’23.