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Home Argument Route

The Formal Spine

Reader. Philosophers, skeptics, people who want the clean theory first.

Argument. Modal Path Ethics is not a vibe, politics, utilitarianism, capability theory, person-affecting ethics, or metaphor. It is a path-structural account of harm, good, better, loci, weighting, resistance, and commensurability.

This is the cleanest "teach the framework alone" path.

The route, in order

  1. Formal: Contraction Is Harm
  2. Formal: What Makes Something a Locus
  3. What Is Not an Extant Locus
  4. Taxonomy of Extant Loci
  5. The Buddhist Path vs. Modal Path Ethics
  6. Gilles Deleuze and Modal Path Ethics
  7. Formal: Weighted Reachable Future Space
  8. Formal: Resistance and Harm
  9. Legibility: Not a Criterion of Moral Depth
  10. Secondary Morals
  11. Commensurability
  12. Our Debt to Bernard Williams
  13. Why Better is Not the Greater Good
  14. Modal Path Ethics Is Not Partisan Politics
  15. Mirror Match: The Modal Path Ethics

The five keystone moves

Every route is built so the reader is forced through these five structural moves.

  1. Harm. Harm is contraction, not just suffering, blame, rights-violation, or bad feeling.
  2. Bearer. The bearer is an extant locus, not necessarily a person.
  3. Reach. Reachability matters more than abstract possibility.
  4. Weight. Weighting prevents flat optionality. Not every lost branch matters equally.
  5. Resistance. Resistance and burden transfer explain hidden harm before final closure.