Purity and time

* journal philosophy frontier ethics work
[2025-12-21 Sun]

1. BACKGROUND

This note records frontier-level clarifications of the system described in Ethics(5). Using concepts from Order and Purity. These clarifications do not modify the ruleset, add obligations, or introduce values. They describe limit properties that follow necessarily once purity is taken as constitutive.

2. Purity is a Type Constraint

Purity is not a moral property applied to actions. It is a type constraint on admissible transitions.(see: Transitions and Behavior)

An action is not evaluated as good or bad. It is either:

  • well-formed under the system’s constraints, or
  • excluded from the action space.

Impure transitions are not wrong. They are ill-typed.

This explains:

  • why justification is irrelevant
  • why persuasion is excluded
  • why violations are classified as structural errors
  • why impurity entails system death rather than correction

Morality operates at compile-time, not run-time. There is no evaluative layer after admissibility.

3. The Absence of Moral Time

The system has no moral temporality. There is:

  • no accumulation of merit
  • no degradation over time
  • no redemption arc
  • no narrative of progress or decline

At any time \(t\), the system state is exhaustively classified as:

  • pure, OR
  • dead

Past purity does not permit impurity in the present.. Past impurity does not contaminate present purity.

Memory carries informational content only. It carries no moral residue, debt, or standing.

Time indexes state-transitions, not moral status.

4. The Semantic Emptiness Between Pure Systems

Two pure systems have nothing to communicate morally. Any exchange between pure systems can only be:

  • informational (non-binding), or
  • contaminating (normative, persuasive, justificatory)

Meaningful moral discourse presupposes:

  • shared evaluative standards
  • outcome relevance
  • or norm formation

All three are excluded by purity.

Therefore, moral communication between pure systems is semantically empty. Silence is structurally equivalent to dialogue.

5. Consequence

From the above:

  • Morality is structural, not relational. It is completely internal.
  • Identity is synchronous, not historical
  • Communication is optional and non-moral
  • Termination preserves purity more reliably than adaptation

The system does not answer the question “why be pure.” Any such question presupposes impurity.1

The system ends where justification would begin. 2

6. Elsewhere

6.1. References

6.2. In my garden

Notes that link to this note (AKA backlinks).

Footnotes:

1

: Constitutive Constraint Analogy (Type System) Structural purity relates to the system in the same way static typing relates to TypeScript. Static typing is not a value, goal, or optimization criterion; it is a constitutive constraint that defines what counts as a valid TypeScript program. A program that violates the type system is not a worse TypeScript program—it is not TypeScript at all. Likewise, purity is not a moral value or aspiration but a type constraint on admissible transitions. A transition violating purity does not constitute immoral behavior within the system; it constitutes non-instantiation of the system. Questions of justification (“why be pure?”) are therefore category errors, analogous to asking why a TypeScript program should type-check.

2

Justification is a meta-operation; the system halts before meta-operations begin.

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