Abstract

Deontological ethics views the morality of an action based upon its accordance with duty or rights, regardless of its consequences. In previous work, we presented some argumentation schemes for descriptive modeling of utilitarian ethical arguments. The premises of those schemes refer to utilitarian concepts such as maximum utility. Here we extend that approach by proposing some argumentation schemes for analysis of arguments based on deontological ethics. The premises refer to deontological concepts of duty, rights, and justice. The conclusions specify whether an action is morally required, forbidden, or permitted. The critical questions are based upon common challenges to deontological ethics. These schemes provide semantic templates for recognizing implicit or explicit premises and conclusions of deontological arguments. Our approach to ethical argumentation is an alternative to current approaches using argumentation schemes of practical reasoning (reasoning about what to do). In addition to proposing novel argumentation schemes, in this paper we examine ethical argumentation in “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” The analysis shows that deontological argumentation schemes as well as ethical variants of some “standard” schemes and rhetorical devices play a major role.