A Diachronic Consistency Argument for Minimizing One’s Own Rights Violations

Deontologists are united in asserting that there are side-constraints on permissible action, prohibiting acts of murder, theft, infidelity, etc., even in cases where performing such acts would make things better overall from an impartial standpoint. These constraints are enshrined in the vocabulary...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Côté, Nicolas (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Springer Science + Business Media B. V 2021
In: Ethical theory and moral practice
Year: 2021, Volume: 24, Issue: 5, Pages: 1109-1121
Further subjects:B Rights
B Rational choice
B Diachronic consistency
B Paradox of deontology
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Description
Summary:Deontologists are united in asserting that there are side-constraints on permissible action, prohibiting acts of murder, theft, infidelity, etc., even in cases where performing such acts would make things better overall from an impartial standpoint. These constraints are enshrined in the vocabulary of rights apply even when violating those constraints would lead to fewer constraint-violations overall: I am prohibited from killing an innocent even when doing so is the only way to prevent you from killing five. However, deontologists are divided over whether we have a duty to violate a smaller number of rights when this is necessary to prevent ourselves from later violating a larger number of rights that are at least as stringent. I argue that individuals do have such a duty, a duty which follows from widely accepted consistency constraints on choice.
ISSN:1572-8447
Contains:Enthalten in: Ethical theory and moral practice
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10677-021-10253-w