Moral Framing
Scoring Pattern
right/wrong + duty/obligation + conscience/shame→ethical reframing of claims
Definition
A measure of how heavily a text employs ethical and moral language to frame its argument — right/wrong dichotomies, appeals to conscience, virtue/vice language, moral urgency, and shame/guilt implications. Moral framing transforms factual or policy claims into ethical imperatives: it's not just that something is true, it's that believing otherwise is wrong. Score 0 means purely descriptive prose; score 5 means the text reads as a moral sermon where every point is an ethical judgment.
Examples
Example 1
This isn't just a policy question — it's a moral imperative. We have a duty to our children. To look the other way is unconscionable.
The em dash reframes a policy issue as an ethical one, "duty" invokes obligation, and "unconscionable" makes the opposing position morally indefensible.
Example 2
What we are witnessing is not just a failure of systems. It is a failure of conscience.
The pivot from "systems" to "conscience" transforms a structural critique into a moral one — the failure becomes personal, not institutional.
Example 3
History will judge us not by what we said but by what we did. And right now, we are doing nothing.
The appeal to historical judgment frames present inaction as a moral choice that will be weighed — "doing nothing" becomes an active ethical failure.
AI Detection Note
AI commonly uses light moral framing ('it's important that we consider the ethical implications') but rarely achieves the sustained moral intensity that human sermonic writers produce. AI moral framing tends to be balanced and both-sides; human sermonic moral framing takes a side and prosecutes it without acknowledging the opposition's moral standing.
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