Consequentializing agent‐centered restrictions: A Kantsequentialist approach

Abstract

AbstractThere is, on a given moral view, an agent‐centered restriction against performing acts of a certain type if that view prohibits agents from performing an instance of that act‐type even to prevent two or more others from each performing a morally comparable instance of that act‐type. The fact that commonsense morality includes agent‐centered restrictions is often seen as a decisive objection to act‐consequentialism. Despite this, I’ll argue that agent‐centered restrictions are more plausibly accommodated within an act‐consequentialist framework than within the more standard side‐constraint framework. For I’ll argue that when we combine agent‐relative act‐consequentialism with a Kantian theory of value, we arrive at a version of consequentialism—namely, Kantsequentialism—that has several advantages over the side‐constraint approach. What's more, I’ll show that this version of consequentialism avoids the disadvantages that critics of consequentializing have presumed that such a theory must have.