In this case, we can go back to our basic principles and derive the prohibitions of stealing and lying without too much difficulty. It would just be conducive to bad consequences, or so the general belief goes. Teleological Reasoning Note, however, that we could often just as easily couch the same moral argument in goal-oriented or consequentialist terms. In such an argument we treat the principles as values rather than as imperatives, and as ends to be achieved in society, rather than laws governing action directly. Moral argument then becomes an exercise in evaluating the means to the end of the best possible society.
Action is right insofar as it brings about good results.
We don't have to go through this procedure every time we find a necklace lying around within reach, of course. Once the act is prohibited, the reasoning proceeds exactly as it did in the nonconsequentialist framework. Ontological Reasoning A third form of reasoning is customarily couched in the terms of virtue or character. In such argument we appeal to the principles as character traits rather than as goals or as rules, as virtues inherent in the moral agent rather than as characteristics of the act. Virtue ethics does not define, initially, just what virtues are worth pursuing most and by whom.