Normative Ethics

Normative ethics is the part of moral philosophy that tries to answer the question “what should we do?” — developing theories and frameworks that can guide action. The major traditions — consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics — each offer different answers, and sophisticated ethical reasoning draws on all three rather than committing exclusively to one. For behavior architects, normative ethics matters because it provides the conceptual vocabulary for reasoning about behavioral design choices. When you’re deciding whether a model should always tell the truth even when it’s harmful, or weighing the interests of different user groups, you’re doing normative ethics — whether or not you use that vocabulary. Familiarity with these frameworks makes those discussions more rigorous.