What someone takes the situation to be
NDT begins with the interpretation active when the judgment forms. Facts that were never represented—and considerations that were merely available—do not explain that judgment.
Normative Detachment Theory
Unratified v52 candidateHow NDT explains a judgment
NDT asks how someone’s understanding of a situation becomes a judgment about what should be done or how something should be appraised. It then asks what makes some of those judgments moral.
In one sentence
A judgment is explained by the interpretation and evaluative support that actually formed it; it is moral when a qualifying represented relationship helped organize that same support.
QuestionHow does one represented situation become this normative judgment?
Why it mattersThe same words can come from different cognitive routes and therefore belong to different types.
Try thisRead the three ideas, then follow either the relationship or provenance path.
The theory in three ideas
These ideas depend on one another, but they are not three timed stages. They identify the materials and relationships NDT uses to explain one particular judgment.
What matters within that understanding
A normative judgment requires a difference in what matters that is active in forming the judgment. That difference may be explicit, attributed, carried by how a representation functions, or derived from those sources.
Where constitutive evaluativity fits
Constitutive evaluativity is the narrower claim that a representation can carry evaluation partly through the role that makes it the representation it is. It is not another name for the broader requirement that normative judgment needs evaluation.
What makes the judgment moral
A normative judgment is moral, in NDT’s sense, when a qualifying represented relationship actually helps organize the evaluation used to form it. Moral cognition is therefore one kind of normative cognition.
Judgment, not behaviorForming a judgment is not the same as acting on it.
How it was formed, not just its wordingThe same words can come from moral and nonmoral routes.
Kind of judgment, not correctnessNDT does not decide whether the judgment is true or justified.
How the formal model is organized
The formal section structure is part of this Overview rather than a separate top-level module. Open it to follow the theory’s exact expository spine, including CET, normative detachment, moral detachment, route survival, Polyphony, testing, and open questions.
Axioms and results
Question: what does each axiom explain? See the distinct work done by the four axioms and the conclusions they jointly support.
Moral relationship structure
Question: what constitutes the relationship, what bends its consequences, and what makes it count for this token? Explore the structure or test a deletion.
Compare NDT
Question: which exact operations match, conflict, or merely contextualize NDT? Begin with clear cases, then inspect all governed records.
Read further
Choose the document that fits your question
Begin with the four reader-facing documents. The formal authorities and supporting audits remain available for readers who need exact definitions, claim status, or project history.
Guided tours
Structure of a Moral Relationship · unratified feedback draft · 5 Sep 2026
What makes a judgment moral?
Why the relationship matters in NDT
NDT asks how an understanding of a situation becomes a judgment—and what makes some judgments moral. Its proposed boundary concerns the reasons actually used. “I should attend to my patient” might express concern for the patient or only fear of a penalty. The relationship map follows the relationship-grounded case: what constitutes the relationship, what urgency adds, and why merely having a relationship in mind is not enough.
Three terms used on the map
Builders are the three required components of the relationship: value in itself, perceived agency, and positioning of the object relative to the subject.
Strict benders change downstream consequences while preserving the exact relationship core and the relationship’s actual contribution in both controlled comparison cases.
A gate marks a required condition, not a timed mental step. The represented features must satisfy the stated criteria.
Follow the physician–patient example
The whole moral-relationship architecture
Select a node for its definition, significance, removal test, and formal status.
A hypothetical illustration of NDT, not experimental evidence. The steps explain different roles, not a measured sequence of mental events.
Assumptions of the physician–patient example
The example stipulates a qualifying relationship: positive inherent value with negative inherent value absent, an operative physician–patient role bridge, relevant perceived agency, and the required subject and object bindings contributing together in the judgment’s actual support. Positive value is an example, not a universal requirement. A professional title alone does not establish the role bridge.
The penalty-only comparison stipulates that no qualifying relationship, including a self-directed relationship, contributes. Self-interest and professional rules do not determine a judgment’s type merely by being named.
Urgency qualifies as strict bending only when the exact relationship core is preserved, the relationship actually contributes in both matched cases, and the separate downstream influence meets the required contribution tests. Strict bending does not, by definition, preserve the final judgment or complete moral classification.
The question at the selected scale
Swipe the diagram horizontally to inspect every node; select a node for readable detail below.
Inspect the selected node
Choose a node
- Why it matters
- Removal or contrast test
Formal definition and status
- Technical role
- Status
A question for other models of moral judgment
Can a model distinguish a relationship that helps form a judgment from a relationship that is merely represented, while preserving the difference between the relationship and influences such as urgency? The model need not use NDT’s labels or divide the work in the same way. The Atlas illustrates NDT’s proposed distinctions; the illustration does not establish that a rival cannot represent them.
Nuances of Normative Judgment
Unratified v52 candidateWhich distinctions would disappear?
A moral obligation or a useful strategy? Concern for a person or a more urgent response? NDT proposes a common structure for explaining differences in normative judgment. Change one feature of a concrete case and inspect which reasons disappear—and which reasons survive.
How to use the removal comparisons
Change one represented feature while keeping the stated comparison conditions fixed. Compare the supported distinction before inspecting its formal record. The authored examples illustrate definitions; the examples are not new experimental evidence.
Seeing an object as both good and bad is not seeing it as neither.
Imagine someone who regards the same community as both good in itself and bad in itself—not merely useful or costly. NDT preserves both evaluations. Remove the positive evaluation: the negative evaluation remains. Remove both: neither remains.
Good in itself Present
Bad in itself Present
Mixed inherent value
Both evaluations remain represented. They do not cancel into neutrality.
Hypothetical, definition-based schematic—not a measured result or an execution of the full model. Branches mean present or absent, not measured intensity.
What the value-profile contrast does—and does not—show
Removing one component changes the profile. Removing both removes a required part of the tested moral relationship. Negative value alone does not mean evil, blame, punishment, or avoidance. A value profile alone does not determine whether the whole judgment is moral, nonmoral, or prudential; qualification and actual contribution require additional conditions.
Choose one controlled intervention
Every result names what becomes unavailable, what is held fixed, and whether moral type or only a subtype or downstream effect changes.
1 Choose a test
2 Inspect the difference
Choose an intervention on the leftThe result will keep the relationship core, route profile, and contribution conditions separate.
- Becomes unavailable
- The distinction tied to the intervention.
- Held fixed
- The exact comparison controls.
- Classification effect
- Whether moral type, only a subtype, or only a downstream result changes.
What these tests establish—and what they do not
The tests expose consequences of NDT’s current decomposition; they do not establish that every rival must use the same vocabulary. This model version’s positioning-route families—identity-mediated positioning, intimacy, and direct encounter—form an exact exhaustive disjunction and may be co-active. Relational Positioning is valence-neutral, and shared, contrastive, and complementary-role identity are forms of the identity-mediated family. By contrast, urgency, vulnerability, power, and sentience are nonexhaustive candidate bender sources whose roles must be demonstrated, not assumed.
NDT and other theories
Unratified v52 candidateA literature review of working parts
Where does NDT preserve an existing idea, add structure, or make a competing claim? Comparing particular concepts and operations makes the answer more precise than matching whole theories or authors. Each comparison names the shared structure, its limits, and its sources.
Describing judgments is not endorsing them
NDT can represent reasoning associated with different moral philosophies without deciding which verdict is correct. Representing a philosophical standard does not imply agreement with every psychological or metaphysical claim made by its advocates.
QuestionWhich exact construct or operation is being compared?
Why it mattersA local match can coexist with a constitutive conflict elsewhere in the same external theory.
Try thisOpen one direct match and one conflict before browsing the full catalog.
Formal structure: the exact section spine of the current Formal Specification, with logical dependency, cross-cutting, testing, and reference links kept distinct.
Axioms and conclusions
Unratified v52 candidateFour axioms—and what follows from themQuestionWhat explanatory work does each axiom do?
Why it mattersKeeping the axioms distinct exposes which conclusions require which commitments.
Try thisRemove one axiom and inspect exactly which registered consequences are no longer reached.
Trace the selected axioms through the formal modelSelect one or more axioms to see where the formal model uses them.
What NDT derives
Five named theorems
Their support differs: some are necessary once NDT’s stated claims and definitions are granted; two establish possibility through a constructed example.
Moral Provenance Theorem
A judgment counts as moral only if a qualifying relationship actually helped form it.Formal record: Qualifying Moral Provenance · necessary consequenceMoral Subset Theorem
Moral judgments are one kind of normative judgment, and some normative judgments are not moral.Formal record: Moral Subset · necessary within NDT’s declared scopeSame Content, Different Moral Type Theorem
Two judgments can say the same thing while one is moral and the other is not, because they were formed through different support.Formal record: Content–Provenance Nonidentity · demonstrated possibilityPolyphony Possibility Theorem
One case can support several locally coherent judgments that can be compared and genuinely conflict.Formal record: Polyphony Is Possible · demonstrated possibilityPlurality–Polyphony Distinction Theorem
Several judgments are not Polyphony unless an appropriate comparison connects them and they genuinely conflict.Formal record: Polyphony Subset · necessary classification
Show eleven additional results in plain language
Ten direct consequences
- A judgment is identified partly by the interpretation in which it formed.Formal record: Frame-indexed judgment identity.
- Material with no active difference in what matters cannot produce guidance by itself.Evaluatively empty input barrier.
- Evaluation can be carried by how a representation guides processing, not only by an explicit value statement.Encoded evaluation is a possible realization.
- A normative judgment forms when active interpretation and evaluation support a particular prescription or appraisal.Typed normative detachment.
- Only what actually helped form this particular judgment belongs to its producing history.Actual judgment provenance.
- A qualifying subject–object relationship is part of what makes a normative judgment moral.Moral-relationship constitutivity.
- Guidance about behavior presupposes a subject represented as able to act.Agent-capable subject.
- Something that did not help form a judgment cannot determine whether it is moral.Noncontributing structure is inert.
- A qualifying relationship grounds only the guidance it actually helps organize.Relationship grounding.
- NDT does not require several local judgments to collapse into one final verdict.No mandatory global verdict.
One result under stated conditions
Under specified matching conditions, two adequate methods should agree about what contributed.Formal record: Cross-scheme convergence. The exact condition requires a same-resolution bridge that preserves the relevant relationship profile, intervention effects, and minimal sufficiency.
Technical checksExplore formal dependencies, sufficiency tests, and audit records
What these checks do: choose a set of results, then test which axioms are enough to derive every result in that set inside the small rule model used here. This does not prove that the axioms are empirically true or that the four headings generate every definition in the Formal Specification.
0 of 12selected targets derived in the rule check
0 of 16derived conclusions activated
Read the technical four-axiom presentation ↗Read the current axiom-and-theorem auditSelect an axiom to compare its formal use with what the smaller rule check derives.
The trace follows declared dependency links from each separately tracked part of an axiom. It shows where that axiom participates; that reach is not itself a proof. NDT’s allowance for several local viewpoints follows from its descriptive scope and Polyphony definitions, not from another axiom.
Formal method and limits
The current structural audit finds 313 formal endpoint premises of several kinds across a 592-node / 1,896-edge graph. It verifies dependency closure and finite witnesses; it does not establish that this is the only natural or model-theoretically independent axiom basis. Read the independent basis audit ↗
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Overview · tap a card to read it
Drag to move the map and pinch or use the zoom buttons to change scale. The Overview includes the formal section structure; Axioms and Theorems presents four explanatory axioms with their components and sixteen derived results. Under comparisons, filter by exact relation or choose a sourced comparison, then zoom for the paired external idea. In Architecture and Theory in Action, the history view is explicitly limited to the frozen 406-node Specification 1.4.5 baseline, while the current view contains 592 formal nodes. Search or jump to a region before selecting very dense nodes. On a phone, tap a node for readable details; with a keyboard, use arrow keys between nodes and Enter to open details.