The Normative Reconstruction of Interstellar Civilization: A New Tripartite Outlook and Governance under Deep Uncertainty (2nd Edition, 6 volumes in total), Volume 1, Chapter 10: The Axiomatic Formulation of Cosmic Responsibility Ethics

This work is the complete manuscript of Chapter 10 of Volume 1 of a six-volume philosophical monograph, completed independently, in preprint form.This chapter presents CRE-AX, the axiomatic formulation of Cosmic Responsibility Ethics: a formal system comprising twelve axioms — five ontological, four epistemological, three normative — together with the inference rules that govern how they are applied. CRE-AX functions, in a sense, as the load-bearing structure of Volume 1. It draws together the three normative principles worked out in earlier chapters, the Recursive Freedom Principle (RFP), the Negative Entropy Responsibility Principle (NRP), and the Reversibility Principle (REV), and it unifies them inside a single deductive architecture — the anchor, so to speak, of the larger theoretical framework. Start with the ontological axioms. These establish the fundamental features of reality as the system conceives it: the primacy of relations over entities, the reality of emergent organization, the openness of the cosmos, the irreversibility of time, the boundedness of agency. The epistemological axioms do parallel work on the side of knowledge. They formalize its finitude, the corrigibility of belief, the irreducibility of deep uncertainty, and the revisability of knowledge. Then come the normative axioms — three of them: a bridge axiom linking the factual and the normative domains, an axiom of possibility value, and an axiom of reversibility priority. On this basis, and only on this basis, the three normative principles become derivable as theorems. The meta-theoretic results matter just as much. Consistency is demonstrated through model construction; the mutual independence of the axioms is established as well. From within the framework, five "forbidden red lines" are derived as boundary cases — action-types that the system prohibits absolutely. And the chapter draws attention to three theoretical insights that surfaced only because the system was formalized: first, the structural equivalence of the three principles under transformation; second, the context-dependence of their priority ordering; third, the dependence of the system's consistency on real-world conditions. That last one, arguably, deserves more reflection than it usually gets. Honesty about limits belongs here too. The chapter closes by acknowledging what the formalization cannot do. The justification of the axioms leans on pre-theoretical ethical judgment — there is no way around that. Ambiguities within the framework remain unresolved. And the system may inherit, perhaps unavoidably, the moral paradoxes already familiar from standard deontic logic. The complete work consists of six volumes. The submission here is the final draft of Chapter 10 of Volume 1, which constitutes an independent and original research study and is fully included in this archival record. This manuscript is a preprint that has not undergone peer review and may be revised in the future; the preprint is archived to document the chronology of the work’s creation and facilitate open academic exchange, and does not affect subsequent formal publication or copyright registration. No formal publication contract has been signed with any publisher. The copyright is solely owned by the author.