# Contested concept: morality

_**What you are reading**: one contested-concept page in Deliberus's deliberation graph. Deliberus maps human reasoning — including claims that are contested, mistaken, or extreme — so that disagreement can be examined precisely. A claim's presence here is not an endorsement: the graph records that someone argued it, how it connects to other reasoning, and how far scrutiny has gotten. The metadata on this page describes the state of that scrutiny, not the truth of the claim._

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- **Contestedness**: criterion
- **Diagnosis**: This divides rule-based ethics from consequence/context-based ethics, which drives the need for administrative law and its legitimacy.
- **Canonical**: `/concept/morality` (data: `/concept/morality.json`)

## Senses in use
- **System-sensitive, dependent on the total state of the system** — used in 4 claim(s)
- **Context-free traditional prohibitions** — used in 3 claim(s)

## Claims using this term
- [A hundred and fifty years ago [before 1968] a plainsman could kill an American bison, cut out only the tongue for his dinner, and discard t…](/claim/claim_21d738cf5799.md) _(sense: System-sensitive, dependent on the total state of the system)_
- ["Thou shalt not . . ." is the form of traditional ethical directives which make no allowance for particular circumstances.](/claim/claim_5c0fd531a4be.md) _(sense: Context-free traditional prohibitions)_
- [That morality is system-sensitive escaped the attention of most codifiers of ethics in the past.](/claim/claim_7e41c99943b1.md) _(sense: System-sensitive, dependent on the total state of the system)_
- ["Thou shalt not . . ." is the form of traditional ethical directives which make no allowance for particular circumstances.](/claim/claim_abfb1454c2e2.md) _(sense: Context-free traditional prohibitions)_
- [The morality of an act is a function of the state of the system at the time it is performed.](/claim/claim_b1387642f30a.md) _(sense: System-sensitive, dependent on the total state of the system)_
- [The laws of our society follow the pattern of ancient ethics.](/claim/claim_b90669d8b4f2.md) _(sense: Context-free traditional prohibitions)_
- [The morality of an act cannot be determined from a photograph. One does not know whether a man killing an elephant or setting fire to the g…](/claim/claim_deffcc6694f8.md) _(sense: System-sensitive, dependent on the total state of the system)_