Closing the Is–Ought Gap through First-Person Integrity: A New Milestone for Dialogue with Analytic Philosophy

This paper develops a structural account of moral obligation grounded in the conditions of agency, meaning, and reciprocal interaction. It argues that meaningful assertion presupposes normative constraints governing applicability, consistency, and mutual recognizability. These constraints are not merely semantic but become interpersonal when deployed among first-person agents capable of justification and reciprocal response. The paper further contends that the integrity of first-person agency constitutes a necessary condition for the persistence of normative space itself. Consequently, obligations of preservation arise not from external moral axioms but from the constitutive requirements of reciprocal agency. By linking meaning, normativity, reciprocity, and first-person integrity within a unified framework, the paper proposes a novel route toward closing the traditional is–ought gap and defending a minimal foundation for moral obligation.