The Toolkit

The course's toolkit assigns each tool its question: fact-sorting for disputes, the theory battery for permissibility, the value lenses for what matters, and the case file for public argument.

A decision arrives — any decision with people in it. First question: what kind of question is it? If the fight is over what happened or what will happen, run the fact-value sort and send fact disputes to evidence. If the question is what may be done, convene the battery: the utility audit counts interests; universalization tests the maxim; the humanity check hunts for persons used merely; virtue and care ask who you become and who depends on you. If the question is what matters or which life to build, the value tools take over: intrinsic against instrumental, the well-being theories, ranking without a ruler. If the question must be argued in public, the case file formats all of it — facts fixed, sides steelmanned, values line named. One habit binds the kit: say your reasons aloud. Every tool in the course is, in the end, a different way of finishing that sentence.