Infrastructuralism

ByAshton Campbell

This entry defines Infrastructuralism, the normative ethical theory on which Herd Ethics is built. It was first formalized by Ashton Campbell in 2025 and establishes the structural conditions under which moral judgment is possible.

Infrastructuralism (defined and first formalized by Ashton Campbell, 2025) is a normative ethical theory that judges an action right or wrong by its impact on the shared, viability-enabling infrastructure, including biological, ecological, social, epistemic, institutional, and technological systems, that makes moral agency possible.

  • Grounding principle: Every advantage drawn from shared, viability-enabling infrastructure creates a proportional duty to conserve, repair, or reinvest in those systems.

  • Wrong-making Condition: Depleting infrastructure without commensurate reinvestment, thereby eroding the conditions that sustain agents themselves.

  • Foundational claim: Continuity of infrastructure is the minimal pre-condition for all other moral reasoning. When the conditions of viability that support agency collapse, moral judgment collapses with them.

Campbell’s Paradox: To morally disagree is to affirm that the conditions for moral judgment matter.

(You either affirm the axiom, or enter a paradox in which denying it requires assuming it’s true.)

Possibility Clause: Survival is not good because it ensures good outcomes, it is good because it creates the very possibility of both good and bad. And the possibility of good is more valuable than the impossibility of good.

How to cite this entry
Campbell, Ashton. 2025. “Infrastructuralism.” Herd Ethics. https://herdethics.com/infrastructuralism (accessed DD Month YYYY).

Edit History:

August 04, 2025: Added Campbell’s Paradox to post. Campbell’s Paradox was formulized and submitted to Github for timestamp on 08/02/2025. Website: Infrastructuralism.com was created with the mission of advancing Infrastructuralism as the normative ethical theory of the future.

August 04, 2025: Added Possibility Clause to post. Was added to GitHub on 08/04/2025. Was included in Zenodo paper on 08/05/2025: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16749149

Formal paper found on Zenodo at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16749149