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'Faisal bin Ali Jaber stood face to face with Representative Adam B. Schiff - a California Democrat who had carved out 20 minutes between two votes on natural gas policy - to tell his story: how he watched in horror last year as drone-fired missiles incinerated his nephew and brother-in-law in a remote Yemeni village. 'Neither of the victims was a member of Al Qaeda. In fact, the opposite was true. They were meeting with three Qaeda members in hopes of changing the militants' views. '"It really puts a human face on the term 'collateral damage,' " said Mr. Schiff, looking awed after listening to Mr. Jaber. 'A gaunt civil engineer with a white mustache, Mr. Jaber spent the past week struggling to pierce the veil of secrecy and anonymity over the Obama administration's drone strike program.... He did not have much luck. 'He met at length with a half-dozen members of Congress, as well as officials from the National Security Council and the State Department. Everywhere, he received heartfelt condolences. But no one has been able to explain why his relatives were killed, or why the administration is not willing to acknowledge its mistake. 'It was an error with unusual resonance. Mr. Jaber's brother-in-law was a cleric who had spoken out against Al Qaeda shortly before the drone killed him. The nephew was a local policeman who had gone along in part to offer protection....'

Moral quandaries often pit concerns about principles against concerns about practical consequences. Should we ban assault rifles and large sodas, restricting people's liberties for the sake of physical health and safety? Should we allow drone killings or torture, if violating one person's rights could save a thousand lives? We like to believe that the principled side of the equation is rooted in deep, reasoned conviction. But a growing wealth of research shows that those values often prove to be finicky, inconsistent intuitions, swayed by ethically irrelevant factors. What you say now you might disagree with in five minutes. And such wavering has implications for both public policy and our personal lives. Philosophers and psychologists often distinguish between two ethical frameworks. A utilitarian perspective evaluates an action purely by its consequences. If it does good, it's good. A deontological approach, meanwhile, also takes into account aspects of the action itself, like whether it adheres to certain rules. Do not kill, even if killing does good. No one adheres strictly to either philosophy, and it turns out we can be nudged one way or the other for illogical reasons.... Regardless of whether you endorse following the rules or calculating benefits, knowing that our instincts are so sensitive to outside factors can prevent us from settling on our first response. Objective moral truth doesn't exist, and these studies show that even if it did, our grasp of it would be tenuous. ...But we can encourage consistency in moral reasoning by viewing issues from many angles, discussing them with other people and monitoring our emotions closely. In recognizing our psychological quirks, we just might find answers we can live with.