Three Ethical Frameworks
If you spend any time on social media, you’ll have noticed a lot of people yelling at each other. It used to be cat pictures, but now it’s just screaming. You’ll also have seen people on one side of a debate repeatedly asking how the other side could possibly do the things they do or believe the things they believe. How can they be so evil? Don’t they know what they’re doing?
The problem is that while both sides are behaving in a moral way — yes, really — they’re using different theories of morality. This is my attempt to explain the most common theories. Once you know about them, you’ll see them crop up as the cause of almost every unproductive political debate.
These moral frameworks aren’t right or wrong in themselves, they’re just different ways of looking at moral problems. In fact, almost everyone will use different models of ethics in different circumstances; but people tend to have a strong bias towards a particular theory.
So let’s run through some systems of ethics.
Consequentialist ethics #
The idea behind consequentialist ethics is that whether an action is moral or not depends on the consequences of the action. It doesn’t matter if your intentions were good, if what you did caused a negative outcome then you made a mistake and acted unethically.
Maybe your child ran out into the street, and you hit them because you wanted to teach them not to do dangerous things. Good intention, but the science is clear that physical punishment causes long term harm to children.
This approach of evaluating morality of actions based on their effects is also known as teleological ethics, teleology being the study of things based on the purpose they serve rather than how they happened. One of the most well-known systems of consequentialist ethics is utilitarianism, defined by Jeremy Bentham, who wrote that “it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.”
Consequentialist ethics are most visible in the area of harm reduction. For instance, many people feel that it’s a good idea to have “needle exchanges”, where drug addicts can get free needles and syringes for injecting heroin. The logic here is that while facilitating drug addiction is bad, it’s better to have addicts use clean needles rather than end up with HIV and hepatitis as well as drug addiction.
To pick an example from the other side of the political spectrum, consider the use of torture. People who argue for torture typically say that yes it’s morally wrong, but it’s better than letting a terrorist set off a bomb that kills many innocent people.
If those arguments sound completely ridiculous to you, chances are you generally favor a different ethical framework.
Deontological ethics #
Deontology is the study of duty or obligation. In deontological ethics, whether an action is moral or not depends on whether it is in accordance with a set of moral principles.
The classic example of deontological ethics is pacifism. The moral principle in this case is that killing other people is wrong. That’s not generally a controversial one, but pacifists will abide by this principle even if the consequence is that an aggressor wins a battle. Conscientious objectors will go to prison rather than take up arms against an enemy.
There are probably as many schools of deontological ethics as there are sets of moral rules. One example is Immanuel Kant’s theory of ethics, whose famous Categorical Imperative says “Act only according to that maxim by which you can also will that it would become a universal law”. A more limited version is the Bible’s famous “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.
Consequentialism vs deontology #
Having defined consequentialist and deontological ethics, let’s look at a few political debates, and how different ethical frameworks lead to people talking past each other.
Abortion #
For anti-abortion people, the abortion debate tends to be a straightforward issue of deontological ethics: abortion involves taking life, taking life is wrong, so abortion should be made illegal to reduce how often it happens.
On the pro-choice side, a frequent argument is to point out that places with abortion bans see higher rates of maternal mortality and infant death. If you’re pregnant, both you and your child have the best chance of living if you’re in a state where abortion is legal.
It’s not that the consequences of abortion bans are unknown to anti-abortion groups. Rather, it’s that they judge what’s ethical based on moral rules, rather than consequences.
There’s also a deontological argument for abortion rights, the bodily autonomy argument. You don’t see that very often, though.
Capital punishment #
People in favor of capital punishment tend to take the deontological view that someone who kills others should in turn be killed; the “eye for an eye” moral principle.
Like with pacifism, you can make a deontological argument against capital punishment. However, often you’ll see a consequentialist argument instead: Capital punishment doesn’t have the desired consequence of deterring crime; it costs more than life imprisonment; it leads to innocent people being executed; and it makes juries less likely to convict, meaning that more violent criminals end up back on the streets.
Voting #
In the US 2024 elections, many on the left said that they were refusing to vote for Kamala Harris because she backed Israel’s actions in Gaza. They took the deontological ethical view that they simply would not vote for someone who supported war crimes and genocide.
Others on the left took a strong consequentialist view: Yes, Kamala supported Israeli war crimes, but Trump would be even worse, so in the spirit of harm reduction, the thing to do was to vote for Kamala anyway.
Neither side is factually wrong, they’re just operating based on different theories of ethics.
So many leopards, so many faces #
The mention of voting and Trump might have brought to mind another question: How can we explain Trump supporters? Not the people who merely voted for him, but the ones who call themselves MAGA.
You’ve probably seen the news stories. The Trump supporter whose wife was deported. The MAGA businessman whose business collapsed because of tariffs. The farmer who voted for Trump and now can’t sell his soybean crop. The Trump-supporting Muslims who can’t have their families visit because of travel bans.
In all of these cases Trump said what he would do before the election, he did it, and it directly harmed his supporters — yet they still support him. How do we explain it? With another ethical theory!
Virtue ethics #
The idea behind virtue ethics is that whether an action is ethical depends on the inherent virtuousness of the person carrying it out. It doesn’t matter what the action is, it doesn’t matter what happens as a result, the action is ethical if a righteous person does it.
In the case of the MAGA crowd, they have decided that Trump is the chosen one, divinely inspired. If he does something, it must be good, even if it harms them. When they can’t see how it could be good, they will say that he is playing “five dimensional chess”. Some even believe QAnon theories and think that Hillary is literally a demon who drains blood from children, and that anything she proposed was by definition bad.
That probably seems bizarre when I spell it all out like that, but in truth most of us dip into virtue ethics from time to time, making our moral judgements depend on who’s being judged. We deem it OK for police to do things that regular people are not allowed to do, for instance. We prohibit convicted pedophiles from innocently hanging around near schools, even if they are judged to be at low risk of reoffending.
Taking a step towards understanding #
Once you know about these theories of ethics, you start to see them crop up everywhere as the root cause of unproductive conversations. Hopefully this article will help kill off a few of those, and help people see where their opponent is coming from. Let me give three examples, one for each ethical framework discussed above.
There is literally no point in trying to have a fact-based discussion of consequences with a hardcore Trump supporter. You might as well try to get an angry dog to stop barking by showing it a really impressive card trick. You’re simply not communicating within any framework they understand. To the MAGA supporter, if Trump does something then it’s good by definition, and if the facts seem to suggest otherwise, then the facts are simply wrong and should be dismissed in favor of alternative facts — ones that support moral behavior as they see it, which means whatever Trump just did.
Trying to shame, guilt trip or scare people into voting for Democratic Party candidates isn’t going to work if they’re voting based on a commitment to deontological ethics. This is something the Democratic Party desperately needs to understand if it’s to win elections: You have to have policies that potential voters on the left can recognize as at least excusable, and you have to give people something positive to vote for.
If you don’t like consequentialists arguing for gun control as a way to reduce deaths due to gun violence and suicide, then you aren’t going to get anywhere by citing the Second Amendment. Even if they agree with the moral rule it expresses in principle, they’re going to be concerned with the consequences of the way it’s currently interpreted.
The effect of religion #
It’s worth thinking about the effect of religious belief on someone’s choice of ethical framework. Christianity tends to result in an increase in deontological thinking; after all, there’s a lot of emphasis on the Ten Commandments. That’s not to say that Christians don’t consider consequences at all, just that they tend to focus more on moral rules.
In contrast, atheists tend to be humanists, focused on human wellbeing, and hence tend to take a consequentialist view. They reject the idea of divine moral rules that must always be followed, but may adopt something like Kant’s (deontological) categorical imperative. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an atheist argue for virtue ethics.
As a result, arguments where participants have different ethical frameworks often look like battles between religion and secularism. This can give the impression of hostility towards religion in general.
Religions other than Christianity can have very different approaches to ethics. In Buddhist ethics, the principle of Right Intention corresponds to deontological thinking; but it’s paired with the principle of Right Action, which focuses on effects and whether the act promotes harmony and wellbeing. There’s also an element of virtue ethics — bodhisattvas represent people of exceptional character and virtue who followers should emulate. Buddhists are encouraged to practice compassion and empathy as part of their character, rather than simply following rules. So there’s a blend of all three of the ethical models described above.
(I don’t really know enough about other religions to summarize which ethical frameworks they favor.)
So I would encourage everyone to watch out for situations where something looks like a battle of religion versus secularism, but it’s really a problem of people following different theories of morality.
Where do we go from here? #
When I started noticing these patterns of conflicting ethical frameworks occurring in every unproductive debate, I found myself wondering if it’s possible to convert people, to get them to use a fundamentally different ethical framework. Personally I find virtue ethics both damaging and utterly ludicrous, but I’ve no idea how I might begin to talk people out of it. I don’t see any good way to engage with it either.
It’s a depressing situation. If we can’t even agree on the basics of how to evaluate the morality of actions, how can we reach consensus? Are we doomed to keep yelling at each other until we tear democracy apart?
I have no answer, but I’m no longer working on my book “Fifty Card Tricks Your Dog Will Love”.