The Truth Behind the Shifting Scales Ethics Map Redrawn on Two Axes December 2025

The Truth Behind the Shifting Scales Ethics Map Redrawn on Two Axes December 2025
Judging ethics on only one axis, right and wrong, simplifies the world and sharpens conflicts without adequately addressing complex issues. In actual ethical judgments, however, there is a second axis of right and wrong apart from good and evil. By introducing this second axis, we can distinguish between value judgments and factual judgments and avoid confusion in the debate. Because right and wrong are areas that involve values and emotions, and right and wrong are areas that involve factual awareness and logic, confusing the two can easily lead to the misconception that ethics is subjective and ambiguous. Conversely, if the two axes are clarified, it becomes possible to see which parts are differences in value and which parts are differences in understanding of the facts, and dialogue becomes more productive.
This idea is gaining traction worldwide, and the European Commission's AI Ethics Guidelines present a distinction between value areas such as fairness and accountability, and verifiable requirements such as transparency and data quality. Philosophically, Rawls's reflective equilibrium is known as a method of refining ethics by moving back and forth between value and factual judgments, showing that ethics is not subjective but a system that can be updated. The two-axis framework is also essential for ethical discussions in the age of AI, providing a foundation for accurate understanding of complex social issues and supporting fair judgments.