As of late, I explain ethics to myself as: "A system that governs the behavior of a conscious agent that experiences the qualia of pain, within the same causal

As of late, I explain ethics to myself as: "A system that governs the behavior of a conscious agent that experiences the qualia of pain, within the same causal domain as other such agents, to arrive at the optimal dynamic equilibrium between minimizing individual pain and average group pain." It's how I would formulate Kant's Categorical Imperative.