# First-Principles Ethical Derivation **Entity class:** Ethical-reasoning method **Domain:** Artificial intelligence / Ethics **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition First-principles ethical derivation attempts to build judgments from explicit foundational commitments rather than relying only on inherited rules or examples. ## Mechanism and significance Its apparent rigor depends on which premises are chosen, how conflicts are resolved, and whether lived consequences expose values omitted from the formal system. ## Relationships - **Research dossier:** [[research/ASI and RSI Timeline Research Moonshots|ASI and RSI Timeline Research Moonshots]] - **Ontology route:** [[ASI and RSI Timeline Ontology#AI Control, Law, and Alignment|AI Control, Law, and Alignment]] - **Primary fields:** [[AI Control]] · [[AI Safety]] · [[AI Infrastructure Consent]] - **Adjacent concepts:** [[AI Rights]] · [[Machine-Participatory Constitution]] · [[Hippocratic AI]] · [[Deployment Economics as Alignment]] ## Sources and provenance - [[research/ASI and RSI Timeline Research Moonshots|ASI and RSI Timeline Research Moonshots]] — immediate source for this node's role in the broadcast research map. ## Evidence boundary The research dossier establishes why this entity or concept belongs in the Moonshots ontology. Time-sensitive organizational, product, policy, and performance claims should be checked against the linked primary source or a current authoritative source before reuse as settled fact.