ethics of the conditions of ethics

Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion

Editorial synthesis · provisional

Definition

The ethics of the conditions of ethics is RB3’s demand to preserve and revise the environments that make moral learning, shared judgment and correction possible. It includes education, media, epistemic infrastructure and institutional norms. The proposal treats capture as damage to these enabling feedback conditions without assuming it eliminates every act of judgment or makes every harm invisible to everyone.

Explanation

The author describes a second-order harm: evidence, expertise, measures and appeals can be arranged so a regime’s effects cannot count against it. Contrary findings may be filtered or recoded without vanishing entirely. The proposed definition preserves that specific condition rather than equating disagreement or ordinary error with complete epistemic capture.

Arendt’s public space of reasons and Floridi’s informational environments supply distinct antecedents. The local informational usage is explicitly derivative, referring to semantic and communicative worlds rather than ontological form-taking. These qualifications prevent the ethical infrastructure account from becoming an unprovided all-purpose metaphysics of information.

The practical demand concerns arrangements in which revision and shared reality remain possible. AB’s objectivity account likewise requires resistance capable of defeating consensus, so preserving common judgment is not simply preserving agreement. The proposal retains public contestation and material correction rather than endorsing one authority’s control over what may be considered true.

Scope and attribution

Protect revisable public judgment and feedback; capture need not erase all dissent, and shared reality is not consensus alone.

AB — The Actual Book

Source-verified occurrence; see the printed-page references below.

Occurrence locators: 195.

RB3 — The Real Book, Volume III: Murmurations

The developed account belongs to RB3 in the cited local scope, with antecedents and qualifications retained.

Occurrence locators: 248, 249, 250, 274, 279, 286, 289, 292, 297.