"Where's this coming from?"

Questions of this kind often reflect students' lack of awareness of the existence of well worked-out, sophisticated ethical frameworks. Ethical theories:
  • Provide systematic ways of framing methods for understanding and analyzing the good and the right
  • Provide and justify reasons for our judging acts, decisions, or policies to be right or wrong/permissible or impermissible
  • Provide ethical principles or guides for action that can be used to decide what to do in particular cases.

Though there exist quite a number of ethical theories, it isn't necessary to get into the nitty gritty of them in response to questions such as these. It may be enough for students to be aware that ethics has been a subject of study in both the West and the East for millennia.

Two major ethical frameworks for resolving conflicts are deontological theories and consequentialist theories.

Deontological Theories appeal to our duty to follow a certain rule or set of rules or to conform to certain principles.

Here are some examples of ethical rules:

  • Always respect persons; never use people merely as a means to some end.
  • Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Here are some examples of ethical principles:

  • Principle of Autonomy: Requires the recognition of the rights of individuals to self-determination.
  • Principle of Justice: An example of a principle of justice would be something like, "Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are to be of the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society."

Consequentialist Theories determine what is right and wrong by weighing the beneficial outcomes against the detrimental outcomes of a particular act and recommend taking that course of action that, all things considered, leads to the best possible consequences.

The most widely held consequentialist theory is known as utilitarianism.

According to utilitarianism, an action is right if it brings about more good than bad (all things considered), and wrong if it brings about more bad than good (all things considered).

Though ethical theories are "where this stuff is coming from," it is important for students to understand that our ethical theories should not strongly conflict with our deepest and soundest reflective moral judgments. Of course, these very judgments could be wrong (and, as history bears out time and time again, often are). What this shows us is that this "where-is-this-stuff-coming-from" question often requires a process of weighing our most sound reflective judgments against theory, and theory against reflective judgment. For many philosophers this cycle of reflecting on and revising our ethical beliefs—this reflective equilibrium—is the hallmark of sound ethical reasoning.