Ethics and Morality

Roles: moral-agent, moral-patient, obligation, transgression, virtue, vice, judgment, conscience, punishment, redemption

The domain of right and wrong, good and evil, duty and transgression. Covers moral reasoning, ethical judgment, conscience, guilt, innocence, and the social systems that enforce moral norms. As a target domain it draws heavily on physical source frames — accounting (moral debts and credits), cleanliness (moral purity), straightness (moral rectitude), vertical orientation (moral standing) — because moral experience is abstract and needs concrete structure to become thinkable and communicable. Lakoff’s Moral Politics (1996) argues that entire political worldviews are organized by different metaphorical mappings onto this domain.

Applied To This Frame (33)

• seafaring → Above Board
• animal-behavior → Animals Are Moral Agents
• purity → Come with Clean Hands
• medicine → First Do No Harm
• governance → Ignorance of the Law Is No Excuse
• Let Justice Be Done Though the Heavens Fall
• athletics-and-combat → Life Is a Ball Game
• banqueting → Life Is a Banquet
• dice-and-games → Life Is a Game of Dice
• economics → Moral Accounting
• economics → Morality Is Accounting
• cleanliness → Morality Is Cleanliness
• purity → Morality Is Purity
• geometry → Morality Is Straightness
• war → Morality Is War
• No One Is Bound to the Impossible
• containers → Obligations Are Containers
• economics → Obligations Are Possessions
• mythology → Pandora's Box
• science-fiction → Prime Directive Is Non-Interference
• science-fiction → Replicant Is Artificial Person
• seafaring → Sailing Close to the Wind
• archery → The Archer
• animal-husbandry → The Dog Tied to the Cart
• navigation → The Helmsman
• The Law Is Harsh but It Is the Law
• geology → The Promontory
• The Willing Suffer No Injury
• athletics-and-combat → The Wrestler
• science-fiction → Three Laws Is Ethical Programming
• governance → Use Your Own So as Not to Harm Another
• craftsmanship → Virtue Is the Art of Living
• agriculture → You Reap What You Sow