Infrastructuralism: The Normative Ethical Theory of the Future—Rooted in Viability-Enabling Infrastructure

This document introduces Infrastructuralism, a normative ethical theory that evaluates moral actions based on their impact on shared, viability-enabling infrastructure. Unlike utilitarianism, deontology, or virtue ethics, Infrastructuralism is grounded in the structural preconditions that make moral agency possible. It presents four original structural guards, including Campbell’s Paradox, the Possibility Clause, the Moral Preservation Principle, and the Impossibility of Amoralism Principle, which together defend the necessity of preserving the viability-enabling infrastructure that makes moral judgment possible. While rooted in moral philosophy, Infrastructuralism is not limited to human-centric ethics. It extends to AI systems, corporations, institutions, and collective agents, any entity whose existence and agency depend on shared infrastructure. It also serves as the foundational normative theory underlying the Herd Ethics framework, a derived application focused on inter-agent moral responsibility and infrastructure-sustaining policy.