The complexity of Cyberspace results from the large number of states possessed by its components, which account for the multifarious and often subtle ways in which those components operate and interact. That is why programs are treated as mathematical objects [8] and why Formal Methods play such an important rôle in the development of critical systems. Their complexity means that even software testing is unable to establish the correctness of any but the most trivial systems. Attempts to reason informally about the correctness of algorithms are well known to fail spectacularly. An ethical theory based on insufficiently rigorous reasoning would be unable to account for the multitude of cases which arise from the complexity of a system's state space.
We conclude that, to account for the decision-making, problem-solving and logically argumentative nature of Computer Ethics, a methodological foundation is required which supports rigorous reasoning. Of course it should, like any formal methodology, be logically consistent to escape vacuous conclusions of logical implications.