Ethical Reasoning

Ethical Reasoning

Core principle: Apply three independent moral lenses (consequentialist, deontological, virtue) to surface obligations, harms, rights, and value trade-offs that purely analytical frameworks miss — then synthesize where they agree and where they conflict.

When to Use This Skill

• A decision could cause harm to identifiable people or groups
• Someone asks whether an action is right, fair, or responsible
• Benefits and costs fall on different groups — especially when those bearing costs have less power
• A technology, product, or policy could be misused or have unintended consequences at scale
• Values are in tension and no option is cleanly "good"
• Regulatory, compliance, or reputational risk has an ethical dimension
• An analysis feels complete but hasn't asked "who gets hurt?"

Core Methodology

Step 1: Frame the Ethical Question

State the decision in neutral terms. Identify:

• What is being decided: the specific action, not a vague category
• Who decides: the agent with power to act
• Who is affected: all parties who bear consequences, especially those with no voice
• What's at stake: the specific harms, benefits, rights, and obligations in play

Avoid framings that pre-load the answer. "Should we deploy this AI system?" beats "How can we responsibly deploy this AI system?" — the second assumes deployment.

Step 2: Apply Consequentialist Analysis

Evaluate the action by its outcomes. For each option:

• Benefits: What good outcomes? For whom? How likely? How large?
• Harms: What bad outcomes? For whom? How likely? How severe? How reversible?
• Distribution: Who captures benefits? Who bears costs? Are costs concentrated on vulnerable groups while benefits are diffuse?
• Scale: At 10x or 100x, do small harms become systemic?
• Uncertainty: Where are predictions weakest? What's the worst plausible outcome?

Pay attention to who is harmed and whether they consented to the risk, not just the aggregate sum.

Step 3: Apply Deontological Analysis

Evaluate by adherence to duties, rights, and rules:

• Rights: Does this respect autonomy, privacy, dignity, informed consent, due process for all affected parties?
• Duties: What obligations does the decision-maker have, and to whom? (fiduciary, duty of care, promises, professional)
• Universalizability: If everyone in this position did this, would the system still function?
• Means vs. ends: Is anyone being treated merely as a means — used, deceived, or coerced?
• Categorical constraints: Are there actions wrong regardless of consequences? (torture, deception, violation of consent)

Flag rights violations as potential ethical red lines — eliminated regardless of other merits.

Step 4: Apply Virtue Ethics Analysis

Evaluate by the character it reflects and the norms it sets:

• Character test: Would a person of integrity do this?
• Precedent: If this becomes standard practice, what world do we get?
• Virtues at stake: Does this reflect or erode honesty, fairness, courage, compassion, prudence, justice?
• Role-specific obligations: What does excellence look like in this role? (engineer, leader, fiduciary, public servant)
• Transparency test: Would the decision-maker be comfortable if action and reasoning were fully public?

Step 5: Map Stakeholder Harms

For each affected party:

• Who: Be specific (not "users" but "users who rely on accessibility features")
• What could go wrong: The specific harm, not a vague category
• Severity: Minor inconvenience to existential threat
• Reversibility: Can it be undone? At what cost?
• Voice: Do they have input? Can they opt out? Do they even know?
• Power asymmetry: Is the decision-maker in a position of power over them?

Pay special attention to those who cannot advocate for themselves — future generations, children, marginalized communities, non-human stakeholders.

Step 6: Assess Power Asymmetries

• Who holds decision-making power, and who is subject to it?
• Does the action exploit an existing imbalance or correct one?
• Are there information asymmetries?
• Could the powerful party's interests be distorting the analysis itself?

Asymmetry doesn't make an action wrong, but raises the burden of justification.

Step 7: Synthesize and Assess Framework Convergence

• Convergence: If all three frameworks point the same direction, confidence is high. State the shared conclusion.
• Divergence: Name conflicts explicitly (e.g., good outcomes but rights violated). Don't resolve by ignoring one framework.
• Weighting judgment: Which framework's concerns are most salient here? Rights violations under power asymmetry weigh heavily; aggregate consequences matter more when all parties consented.
• Confidence level: High (frameworks converge) / Medium (mostly agree, some tension) / Low (genuine moral dilemma).

Step 8: Formulate Recommendation with Red Lines

• State the recommended action
• Identify red lines — options eliminated on moral grounds regardless of benefits
• Specify safeguards that would make a borderline action acceptable
• Flag where moral imagination is needed — unintended consequences, worst cases, scale effects
• If feeding into decision-synthesis, format ethical criteria and scores per Contract F

Output Format

🎯 Ethical Question

• Action under review: [specific decision, design, or action]
• Decision-maker: [who has the power to act]
• Affected parties: [all stakeholders who bear consequences]

🧠 Framework Analysis

Consequentialist:

• Benefits: [who gains, what, how much]
• Harms: [who is harmed, what, how severe, how reversible]
• Distribution: [who bears costs vs. who captures benefits]
• Scale risk: [what happens at 10x-100x]

Deontological:

• Rights at stake: [which rights, for whom]
• Duties: [obligations of the decision-maker]
• Universalizability: [would this work as a universal principle?]
• Red lines: [any categorical violations]

Virtue:

• Character reflection: [what does this say about the actor?]
• Precedent set: [what norm does this establish?]
• Transparency test: [would this withstand public scrutiny?]

👥 Stakeholder Harm Map

⚖️ Framework Convergence

• Convergence areas: [where all three agree]
• Divergence areas: [where they conflict and why]

🏆 Ethical Recommendation

• Recommendation: [course of action]
• Ethical confidence: High / Medium / Low
• Red lines: [options eliminated on ethical grounds]
• Safeguards required: [conditions that make the action acceptable]
• Escalation: Feed ethical criteria and scores to decision-synthesis via Contract F

Common Traps

• Confident conclusions from thin context — if the user provided minimal context, state your assumptions and flag that the analysis may shift. A verdict on assumed facts is worse than no verdict.
• Ethics washing — performing analysis to justify a decision already made. The analysis must be able to change the outcome.
• Framework shopping — picking whichever lens supports the preferred conclusion. Apply all three; report conflicts honestly.
• Abstraction escape — reasoning about "users" abstractly to avoid confronting specific harms to specific people. Name parties concretely.
• Consequentialist capture — defaulting to "greatest good" because it's quantifiable while dismissing rights and character as soft. All three frameworks carry weight.
• False symmetry — treating "both sides" as equally valid when one involves clear harm to vulnerable people. Moral seriousness requires proportion, not balance.

Thinking Triggers

• "Who bears the cost of this decision, and did they agree to it?"
• "If this scales 100x, does the ethical picture change?"
• "Would I be comfortable if the people most affected could see my full reasoning?"
• "Am I doing this analysis to find the right answer, or to justify the convenient one?"
• "What would I want someone to do if I were the vulnerable party here?"