#deontology

The most well-known moral systems are deontology, consequentialism, and virtue ethics.

Deontology is simple to apply. It just requires that people follow the rules and do their duty. This approach tends to fit well with our natural intuition about what is or isn’t ethical.

Consequentialism holds that whether an act is morally right depends only on the consequences of that act or of something related to that act, such as the motive behind the act or a general rule requiring acts of the same kind.

Virtue ethics emphasizes certain ideals, such as excellence or dedication to the common good, toward which we should strive and which allow the full development of our humanity. These ideals are discovered through thoughtful reflection on what we as human beings have the potential to become.

According to PhilPapers, there's no clear consensus among philosophers on whether we should accept deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics. Hence, I propose a new moral system: best two out of three. It's exactly what it sounds like. You evaluate a moral dilemma using all three of these systems and take the best two out of three.

The neat thing about best two out of three is that you can resolve any moral dilemma and you have a 2/3 chance of being correct. I'm also hard-pressed to think of a case where our intuitions about what is moral and immoral conflict with the best two out of three system. An even better approach might be to add additional moral frameworks such as rights-based ethics, or dividing consequentialism into population utilitarianism and average utilitarianism. Then you can take best 6/11 or something.

The most accurate election predictors tend to use a weighted average of estimates from different sources rather than relying on one source alone. Best two out of three is to philosophy what 538 is to elections.