Use the live research desk
Compare two cause areas through every lens, change the weights and inspect the equal-weight baseline. Save your reasons, disagreements and proposed corrections in the deliberation workspace. Its indices average editorial sketches; they do not measure moral truth or charity effectiveness.
Your workspace stays in this browser. Save records, edit them or fork frozen versions, export JSON, a research memo or CSV, and import a backup with an explicit replacement step. Deleting or clearing offers an undo while the page remains open. No notes are submitted to Charitology. The institutional goals below remain the program’s longer-term charter.
What it is
Ask a welfare-minded giver, a justice-minded giver and a giver guided by faith to rank the same causes, and you get three different lists. The Moral Frameworks Program studies those differences on purpose. It maintains src/data/frameworks.json, the open file behind the Values Compass and the Portfolio Builder.
How it works
The file describes eight frameworks: welfare, rights and duties, justice, care, faith and tradition, future generations, all life and flourishing. For each one it records the question the framework asks, a few thinkers associated with it and a priority from 0 to 5 for each of 17 cause areas.
Those numbers are editorial sketches, not measurements, and the file says so. Real philosophers disagree inside every framework. So the program’s main work is review. People who hold a framework check its sketch, argue about the scores in public and change them by pull request with their reasons attached. Where two frameworks reach opposite conclusions about the same gift, the program writes the disagreement up for the Disagreement Register.
Why it matters for the system
The Single Lens is the condition Charitology was founded to treat: considering several frameworks may reveal choices that one lens misses. This is a hypothesis, not a measured claim about most givers. A shared, public map of the frameworks turns an invisible lens into a visible choice. A giver can see their own priorities, see how the same money looks through the other seven lenses and decide knowing both. The map also gives researchers a common starting point for Open Problem 16, Moral Parliament in Practice, which asks how to allocate money when you aren’t sure which framework is right.
Risks and limits
A score from 0 to 5 can flatten a tradition that took centuries to build, and it can look more precise than it is. The file already labels its scores as sketches. The program would add who reviewed each sketch and keep the reasoning next to the number. Eight frameworks are also not all of them, and the list can grow whenever someone makes a good case for a missing one.
What success looks like
Within three years, every framework has been reviewed by people who hold it and the sketches have changed because of that review. The tools built on them show the reasoning and reviewers behind each score.
Compare the same choice through eight lenses
Change the two causes and your weights in the workspace below. The table shows where the project’s framework sketches agree or part. Scores are editorial priorities from 0 to 5, not findings about moral truth or charity effectiveness.
The example compares global health with arts and culture. Its equal weights are an illustration you can change.
A weighted index assumes these editorial priorities can be averaged. That assumption is contestable. Unweighted averages use all eight lenses; custom averages use only entered positive weights. Blank and zero weights are reported separately.
Moral-lens deliberation workspace
New recordSave a choice, its lens weights, the disagreements you found and a reasoned correction. Exports preserve your reasoning so a contributor can challenge or improve the shared sketches.
Your work stays in this browser. Export a backup to move it elsewhere. Entries are your research notes, not verified findings or ratings.