Agape-Centered Ethics: A Naturalistic Framework Grounded in Vicarious Aversion (Short Running Title): The ACE model

Traditional ethical theories struggle to locate universally accepted, objective sources for moral value, often relying on non-empirical axioms. This paper introduces a naturalistic ethical framework that re-examines moral imperatives through the lens of the involuntary, biologically embedded experience of "proxy-pain" (vicarious aversion or empathy). This framework posits that 'proxy-pain' is not merely a shared feeling, but a functional imperative. The agent’s drive for self-defense against this internal aversion creates a direct instruction to act, effectively transforming the descriptive 'is' of neurobiological distress into the prescriptive 'ought' of moral intervention. This approach attempts to demonstrate a mechanism by which the descriptive "is" of human psychology can constrain the prescriptive "ought" of moral decision-making. Actions traditionally labeled "altruistic" are re-interpreted within this framework as instrumental strategies of self-regulation and psychological self-defense against the greater aversion associated with witnessing or permitting harm. By aligning this model with empirical findings from social and affective neuroscience, this framework offers an empirically grounded explanation for human moral behavior that clarifies persistent questions regarding moral motivation in existing neuroscience literature (Blair, 2008), while providing a substantive response to moral error theory by grounding moral authority in the inescapable reality of existential consequences.