Systematized ethics describes the ethical nature of actions and circumstances, most notably concerning these three basic dimensions of morality:

1) moral level — how good, egocentric or evil?
2) moral weight — how important is the topic?
3) moral responsibility — how intentional is the action?

1st dimension: moral level

The five basic levels of morality are:

• Crime (–2), activity that usually causes someone else to become Victim of Crime (+2).
• Legal Egocentricity (–1), activity that directly or at least hypothetically leaves someone else as Victim of Egocentricity (+1), without violating anyone’s obvious human rights. Also destroying or risking one’s own health or property belongs to this category.
• Equality or Neutral (0), activity that is not detrimental for people’s equal happiness.

The symbols for these moral levels, –2  –1  0  +1  +2, are equidistant integers for mathematical reasons, which becomes apparent later in this introduction. Any sequence of equidistant numbers would serve the same purpose, as long as the third number (the neutral center point) is zero.

The expression “obvious human rights” appears many times in this description. This concept is debatable, as is any definition of human rights that has ever been suggested. The United Nations published an ambitious definition of human rights in 1948, but no country has ever fully implemented it. The most avoided detail in this declaration is the requirement of equal salary for equal work. In a market economy companies often compete of workers by offering an attractive salary. Thus someone gets a higher salary for equal work that someone else does for a lower salary in a different company. No country has ever criminalized this practice, neither does any country plan to do so.

There are also other philosophical approaches to the question, what maximally fair treatment of workers would mean theoretically. A famous principle is “to each according to his needs”, which would favour a higher salary to persons who have young children, and thus greater needs. There are many ways to define what “equal” treatment of humans is, or what the minimum permissible treatment of humans should be like.

2nd dimension: moral weight

Moral weight indicates the relative importance of a moral issue, which is often the practical impact that an action has on the lives of people. The scale above is loaded with five moral actions, whose position is symmetrical relative to the center point. The scale is not in balance, despite the symmetrical distribution of the loads, because one of the moral actions has a much heavier moral weight than the other actions have.

The moral weight of murder is 100 % of a human life. The moral weight of all other ethical issues could be estimated as a percentage of the value of a human life. (Or more probably, fraction of a permillage.) In economic topics the moral weight can be indicated as a sum of money.

The justice system often converts the moral weight of a crime into a sum of money, which is estimated to be a “fair compensation” for the harm that the victim has suffered. Such conversion between personal suffering and a monetary compensation is a very subjective issue. Therefore it is recommendable to avoid making this conversion, unless there is specific need for it. For statistical purposes, the recommended conversion rate is: being prevented from ordinary happy life for one hour is equal to the average salary of one working hour, counting maximum 16 hours per day. When personal and economic moral weights are analyzed separately, they are called Personal Moral Weight (MoW.p) and Impersonal Moral Weight (MoW.i).

The suffering of animals has moral weight too. A possible philosophical approach is that the moral weight of a quite common species (which is not in danger of extinction) depends on its typical intelligence. From this point of view, the moral weight of a human life would be half a billion times greater than the moral weight of a mosquito’s life, because humans are approximately half a billion times more intelligent than mosquitos. The moral weight of plants and nature would be based on their role in supporting the lives of creatures that have a brain and awareness.

When moral weight and some other factors are taken into account, moral level does not always stay as a clean integer: it can become any decimal number between –2.0 and +2.0. For example, if two people have 5000 USD money each, there is perfect equality between them (+0.0). If one person has 4999 USD and the other has 1 USD, there is great inequality between them (–1.0 <=> +1.0). But what if one person has 5500 USD and the other has 4500 USD? It is not 100 % inequality, as there is only 10 % deviation from perfect equality (–0.1 <=> +0.1). Besides, we don’t know how diligent or lazy these two people are. Profound moral discussion about wealth would be much more complex than this.

3rd dimension: moral responsibility

An action can be a conscious decision, a pure accident, or then something between these two extremes. The mental capacity to make moral decisions also varies between a grown-up adult, a young child, a mentally retarded person, and a person with a mental disorder. A person’s moral responsibility is close to zero, if there is no mental capacity or social liberty to make moral decisions.

The age of majority (full legal responsiblity) and the laws concerning minors vary between countries. The moral abilities of young persons do not vary much between countries, however. Legislation and reality are two different things. We can discuss a person’s legal responsibility (MoR.l) separately from his or her observable or theoretically defined moral responsibility (MoR.t). In this introduction moral responsibility is always a theoretical concept: MoR = MoR.t.

The difference between moral and legal responsibility can be dramatic in some rare scenarios. Legislation can hold a person fully accountable (at least what comes to economic compensation) for an accident that technically involved some body parts of the person, in an unfortunate event in which something got destroyed. A theoretical approach might regard the person’s moral responsibility (and therefore also economic responsibility) as 0 %, however. If there is no intention and no untypical negligence, the theoretical moral responsibility is zero.

Some basic concepts

With the precision of 20 %, moral status is a square on top of the 3D cube drawing (see top of this page), as its formula is MoL * MoR, and the two dimensions for the top of the 3D cube are moral level (MoL) and moral responsibility (MoR).

Moral category has logical similarities with moral level, but moral category is a more complex concept philosophically. (The “n” in its calculation is a correction factor for moral responsibility, with a value between 0 % and 100 %.) Some moral categories are “reconciling” in nature, so that they neutralize the impact of some other moral actions. Crime (–2.0) leaves the moral balance at –2.0, if Victim of Crime (+2.0) is ignored when calculating the balance. However, forgiveness (+2.0) or legal punishment (+2.0) are counted into the balance, and they can restore the moral balance at neutral 0.0: (–2.0 + +2.0) / 2 = 0.0.

Practical impact and practical balance describe the consequences of actions from a practical point of view, without taking into account the dimension of “guilt” or moral responsibility.

175 moral categories

The ethical nature of actions and circumstances can be described with at least 175 basic moral categories, when we take into account also other philosophical points of view than the “three basic dimensions” of morality (moral level, moral weight and moral responsibility).

Some moral categories are very obviously disputable, so that different persons would estimate them to belong to a different level of morality (depending on what is concluded about the debatable social or naturalistic claims, which would define their moral nature). The most obviously disputable moral categories include the word “disputed” in the name of the category. These categories are mentioned twice in the list, at two alternative levels of morality: either at moral level –2/+2 as a debatable alternative to moral level –1/+1, or at moral level –1/+1 as a debatable alternative to moral level 0. Many other moral categories than those marked with the word “disputed” can also be debatable.

This description of moral categories was gradually developed by Ion Mittler between 1996 – 2024. Each moral category is marked with the year when its description was added in this theory. You can select a year below to see the categories that the theory included in that year. The latest major revision of the list in december 2024 increased the number of described categories from 24 to 175. Choosing any other year than 2024 makes the list much shorter and easier to approach.

Click the name of a moral category to show or hide a practical example, which action or circumstance might be included in the category.

48 moral aspects

The description of 175 moral categories uses these 48 letter codes for various aspects of morality. Nearly all letters of the A–Z alphabet are used twice (in uppercase and lowercase), except these four: e, Q, z, l (lowercase L, which is avoided because of its visual similarity to uppercase I).

The 175 moral categories from category 5 O until 7 N are listed in the same order as the moral aspects below. From 7 N forward the moral categories are listed in reverse order compared to this list. There is a tendency that this list begins with aspects that are the most reproachable, or involve the greatest moral responsibility, and ends with aspects that are the least reproachable, or involve the smallest moral responsibility. Such a tendency does not fully explain the chosen order, however, because the order is based on many points of view, which are philosophically very different, and comparing them on a one-dimensional spectrum is like comparing “pears and apples”. Yet some order must be chosen, for such a presentation as this.