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DEONTOLOGICAL MORAL OBLIGATIONS AND NON‐WELFARIST AGENT‐RELATIVE VALUES
Author(s) -
Smith Michael
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
ratio
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.475
H-Index - 29
eISSN - 1467-9329
pISSN - 0034-0006
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9329.2011.00506.x
Subject(s) - beneficence , morality , action (physics) , rational agent , value (mathematics) , economics , welfare , epistemology , law and economics , philosophy , law , political science , autonomy , computer science , neoclassical economics , physics , quantum mechanics , machine learning
Abstract Many claim that a plausible moral theory would have to include a principle of beneficence, a principle telling us to produce goods that are both welfarist and agent‐neutral. But when we think carefully about the necessary connection between moral obligations and reasons for action, we see that agents have two reasons for action, and two moral obligations: they must not interfere with any agent's exercise of his rational capacities and they must do what they can to make sure that agents have rational capacities to exercise. According to this distinctively deontological view of morality, though we are obliged to produce goods, the goods in question are non‐welfarist and agent‐relative. The value of welfare thus turns out to be, at best, instrumental.