## 1. Deontology's Foil: Consequentialism



Because deontological theories are best understood in contrast to
consequentialist ones, a brief look at consequentialism and a survey
of the problems with it that motivate its deontological opponents,
provides a helpful prelude to taking up deontological theories
themselves. Consequentialists hold that choices--acts and/or
intentions--are to be morally assessed solely by the states of
affairs they bring about. Consequentialists thus must specify
initially the states of affairs that are intrinsically
valuable--often called, collectively, "the Good."
They then are in a position to assert that whatever choices increase
the Good, that is, bring about more of it, are the choices that it is
morally right to make and to execute. (The Good in that sense is said
to be prior to "the Right.")



Consequentialists can and do differ widely in terms of specifying the
Good. Some consequentialists are monists about the Good. Utilitarians,
for example, identify the Good with pleasure, happiness, desire
satisfaction, or "welfare" in some other sense. Other
consequentialists are pluralists regarding the Good. Some of such
pluralists believe that how the Good is distributed among persons (or
all sentient beings) is itself partly constitutive of the Good,
whereas conventional utilitarians merely add or average each
person's share of the Good to achieve the Good's
maximization.



Moreover, there are some consequentialists who hold that the doing or
refraining from doing, of certain kinds of acts are themselves
intrinsically valuable states of affairs constitutive of the Good. An
example of this is the positing of rights not being violated, or
duties being kept, as part of the Good to be maximized--the
so-called "utilitarianism of rights" (Nozick 1974).



None of these pluralist positions erase the difference between
consequentialism and deontology. For the essence of consequentialism
is still present in such positions: an action would be right only
insofar as it maximizes these Good-making states of affairs being
caused to exist.



However much consequentialists differ about what the Good consists in,
they all agree that the morally right choices are those that increase
(either directly or indirectly) the Good. Moreover, consequentialists
generally agree that the Good is "agent-neutral" (Parfit
1984; Nagel 1986). That is, valuable states of affairs are states of
affairs that all agents have reason to achieve without regard to
whether such states of affairs are achieved through the exercise of
one's own agency or not.



Consequentialism is frequently criticized on a number of grounds. Two
of these are particularly apt for revealing the temptations motivating
the alternative approach to deontic ethics that is deontology. The two
criticisms pertinent here are that consequentialism is, on the one
hand, overly demanding, and, on the other hand, that it is not
demanding enough. The criticism regarding extreme demandingness runs
like this: for consequentialists, there is no realm of moral
permissions, no realm of going beyond one's moral duty
(supererogation), no realm of moral indifference. All acts are
seemingly either required or forbidden. And there also seems to be no
space for the consequentialist in which to show partiality to one's
own projects or to one's family, friends, and countrymen, leading some
critics of consequentialism to deem it a profoundly alienating and
perhaps self-effacing moral theory (Williams 1973).



On the other hand, consequentialism is also criticized for what it
seemingly permits. It seemingly demands (and thus, of course, permits)
that in certain circumstances innocents be killed, beaten, lied to, or
deprived of material goods to produce greater benefits for others.
Consequences--and only consequences--can conceivably justify
*any* kind of act, for it does not matter how harmful it is to
some so long as it is more beneficial to others.



A well-worn example of this over-permissiveness of consequentialism is
that of a case standardly called, Transplant. A surgeon has five
patients dying of organ failure and one healthy patient whose organs
can save the five. In the right circumstances, surgeon will be
permitted (and indeed required) by consequentialism to kill the
healthy patient to obtain his organs, assuming there are no relevant
consequences other than the saving of the five and the death of the
one. Likewise, consequentialism will permit (in a case that we shall
call, Fat Man) that a fat man be pushed in front of a runaway trolley
if his being crushed by the trolley will halt its advance towards five
workers trapped on the track. We shall return to these examples later
on.



Consequentialists are of course not bereft of replies to these two
criticisms. Some retreat from maximizing the Good to
"satisficing"--that is, making the achievement of
only a certain level of the Good mandatory (Slote 1984). This move
opens up some space for personal projects and relationships, as well
as a realm of the morally permissible. It is not clear, however, that
satisficing is adequately motivated, except to avoid the problems of
maximizing. Nor is it clear that the level of mandatory satisficing
can be nonarbitrarily specified, or that satisficing will not require
deontological constraints to protect satisficers from maximizers.



Another move is to introduce a positive/negative duty distinction
within consequentialism. On this view, our (negative) duty is not to
make the world worse by actions having bad consequences; lacking is a
corresponding (positive) duty to make the world better by actions
having good consequences (Bentham 1789 (1948); Quinton 2007). We thus
have a consequentialist duty not to kill the one in Transplant or in
Fat Man; and there is no counterbalancing duty to save five that
overrides this. Yet as with the satisficing move, it is unclear how a
consistent consequentialist can motivate this restriction on all-out
optimization of the Good.



Yet another idea popular with consequentialists is to move from
consequentialism as a theory that directly assesses *acts* to
consequentialism as a theory that directly assesses
*rules*--or character-trait inculcation--and assesses
acts only indirectly by reference to such rules (or character-traits)
(Alexander 1985). Its proponents contend that indirect
consequentialism can avoid the criticisms of direct (act)
consequentialism because it will not legitimate egregious violations
of ordinary moral standards--e.g., the killing of the innocent to
bring about some better state of affairs--nor will it be overly
demanding and thus alienating each of us from our own projects.



The relevance here of these defensive maneuvers by consequentialists
is their common attempt to mimic the intuitively plausible aspects of
a non-consequentialist, deontological approach to ethics. For as we
shall now explore, the strengths of deontological approaches lie: (1)
in their categorical prohibition of actions like the killing of
innocents, even when good consequences are in the offing; and (2) in
their permission to each of us to pursue our own projects free of any
constant demand that we shape those projects so as to make everyone
else well off.


## 2. Deontological Theories



Having now briefly taken a look at deontologists' foil,
consequentialist theories of right action, we turn now to examine
deontological theories. In contrast to consequentialist theories,
deontological theories judge the morality of choices by criteria
different from the states of affairs those choices bring about. The
most familiar forms of deontology, and also the forms presenting the
greatest contrast to consequentialism, hold that some choices cannot
be justified by their effects--that no matter how morally good
their consequences, some choices are morally forbidden. On such
familiar deontological accounts of morality, agents cannot make
certain wrongful choices even if by doing so the number of those exact
kinds of wrongful choices will be minimized (because other agents will
be prevented from engaging in similar wrongful choices). For such
deontologists, what makes a choice right is its conformity with a
moral norm. Such norms are to be simply obeyed by each moral agent;
such norm-keepings are not to be maximized by each agent. In this
sense, for such deontologists, the Right is said to have priority over
the Good. If an act is not in accord with the Right, it may not be
undertaken, no matter the Good that it might produce (including even a
Good consisting of acts in accordance with the Right).



Analogously, deontologists typically supplement non-consequentialist
obligations with non-consequentialist permissions (Scheffler 1982).
That is, certain actions can be right even though not maximizing of
good consequences, for the rightness of such actions consists in their
instantiating certain norms (here, of permission and not of
obligation). Such actions are permitted, not just in the weak sense
that there is no obligation not to do them, but also in the strong
sense that one is permitted to do them even though they are productive
of less good consequences than their alternatives (Moore 2008). Such
strongly permitted actions include actions one is obligated to do, but
(importantly) also included are actions one is not obligated to do. It
is this last feature of such actions that warrants their separate
mention for deontologists.



### 2.1 Agent-Centered Deontological Theories



The most traditional mode of taxonomizing deontological theories is to
divide them between agent-centered versus victim-centered (or
"patient-centered") theories (Scheffler 1988; Kamm 2007).
Consider first agent-centered deontological theories. According to
agent-centered theories, we each have both permissions and obligations
that give us agent-relative reasons for action. An agent-relative
reason is an objective reason, just as are agent neutral reasons;
neither is to be confused with either the relativistic reasons of a
relativist meta-ethics, nor with the subjective reasons that form the
nerve of psychological explanations of human action (Nagel 1986). An
agent-relative reason is so-called because it is a reason relative to
the agent whose reason it is; it need not (although it may) constitute
a reason for anyone else. Thus, an agent-relative *obligation*
is an obligation for a particular agent to take or refrain from taking
some action; and because it is agent-relative, the obligation does not
necessarily give anyone else a reason to support that action. Each
parent, for example, is commonly thought to have such special
obligations to his/her child, obligations not shared by anyone else.
Likewise, an agent-relative *permission* is a permission for
some agent to do some act even though others may not be permitted to
aid that agent in the doing of his permitted action. Each parent, to
revert to the same example, is commonly thought to be permitted (at
the least) to save his own child even at the cost of not saving two
other children to whom he has no special relation. Agent-centered
theories and the agent-relative reasons on which they are based not
only enjoin each of us to do or not to do certain things; they also
instruct me to treat *my* friends, *my* family,
*my* promisees in certain ways because they are *mine*,
even if by neglecting them I could do more for others' friends,
families, and promisees.



At the heart of agent-centered theories (with their agent-relative
reasons) is the idea of agency. The moral plausibility of
agent-centered theories is rooted here. The idea is that morality is
intensely personal, in the sense that we are each enjoined to keep our
own moral house in order. Our categorical obligations are not to focus
on how our actions cause or enable other agents to do evil; the focus
of our categorical obligations is to keep our own agency free of moral
taint.



Each agent's distinctive moral concern with his/her own agency puts
some pressure on agent-centered theories to clarify how and when our
agency is or is not involved in various situations. Agent-centered
theories famously divide between those that emphasize the role of
intention or other mental states in constituting the morally important
kind of agency, and those that emphasize the actions of agents as
playing such a role. There are also agent-centered theories that
emphasize both intentions and actions equally in constituting the
morally relevant agency of persons.



On the first of these three agent-relative views, it is most commonly
asserted that it is our intended ends and intended means that most
crucially define our agency. Such intentions mark out what it is we
set out to achieve through our actions. If we intend something bad as
an end, or even as a means to some more beneficent end, we are said to
have "set ourselves at evil," something we are
categorically forbidden to do (Aquinas *Summa Theologica*).



Three items usefully contrasted with such intentions are
*belief*, *risk*, and *cause*. If we predict that
an act of ours will result in evil, such prediction is a cognitive
state (of belief); it is not a conative state of intention to bring
about such a result, either as an end in itself or as a means to some
other end. In this case, our agency is involved only to the extent
that we have shown ourselves as being willing to tolerate evil results
flowing from our acts; but we have not set out to achieve such evil by
our acts. Likewise, a risking and/or causing of some evil result is
distinct from any intention to achieve it. We can intend such a
result, and we can even execute such an intention so that it becomes a
trying, without in fact either causing or even risking it. (It is,
however, true that we must *believe* we are risking the result
to some extent, however minimal, for the result to be what we intend
to bring about by our act.) Also, we can cause or risk such results
without intending them. For example, we can intend to kill and even
try to kill someone without killing him; and we can kill him without
intending or trying to kill him, as when we kill accidentally.
Intending thus does not collapse into risking, causing, or predicting;
and on the version of agent-centered deontology here considered, it is
intending (or perhaps trying) alone that marks the involvement of our
agency in a way so as to bring agent-centered obligations and
permissions into play.



Deontologists of this stripe are committed to something like the
doctrine of double effect, a long-established doctrine of Catholic
theology (Woodward 2001). The Doctrine in its most familiar form
asserts that we are categorically forbidden to intend evils such as
killing the innocent or torturing others, even though doing such acts
would minimize the doing of like acts by others (or even ourselves) in
the future. By contrast, if we only risk, cause, or predict that our
acts will have consequences making them acts of killing or of torture,
then we might be able to justify the doing of such acts by the
killing/torture-minimizing consequences of such actions. Whether such
distinctions are plausible is standardly taken to measure the
plausibility of an intention-focused version of the agent-centered
version of deontology.



There are other versions of mental-state focused agent relativity that
do not focus on intentions (Hurd 1994). Some of these versions focus
on predictive belief as much as on intention (at least when the belief
is of a high degree of certainty). Other versions focus on intended
ends ("motives") alone. Still others focus on the
deliberative processes that precede the formation of intentions, so
that even to contemplate the doing of an evil act impermissibly
invokes our agency (Anscombe 1958; Geach 1969; Nagel 1979). But
intention-focused versions are the most familiar versions of so-called
"inner wickedness" versions of agent-centered
deontology.



The second kind of agent-centered deontology is one focused on
actions, not mental states. Such a view can concede that all human
actions must originate with some kind of mental state, often styled a
volition or a willing; such a view can even concede that volitions or
willings are an intention of a certain kind (Moore 1993, Ch. 6).
Indeed, such source of human actions in willing is what plausibly
connects actions to the agency that is of moral concern on the
agent-centered version of deontology. Yet to will the movement of a
finger on a trigger is distinct from an intention to kill a person by
that finger movement. The act view of agency is thus distinct from the
intentions (or other mental state) view of agency.



On this view, our agent-relative obligations and permissions have as
their content certain kinds of actions: we are obligated not to
*kill* innocents for example. The killing of an innocent of
course requires that there be a death of such innocent, but there is
no agency involved in mere events such as deaths. Needed for there to
be a *killing* are two other items. One we remarked on before:
the action of the putative agent must have its source in a willing.
But the other maker of agency here is more interesting for present
purposes: the willing must *cause* the death of the innocent
for an act to be a *killing* of such innocent. Much (on this
view) is loaded into the requirement of causation.



First, *causings* of evils like deaths of innocents are
commonly distinguished from *omissions* to prevent such deaths.
Holding a baby's head under water until it drowns is a killing; seeing
a baby lying face down in a puddle and doing nothing to save it when
one could do so easily is a failure to prevent its death. Our
categorical obligations are usually negative in content: we are not to
kill the baby. We may have an obligation to save it, but this will not
be an agent-relative obligation, on the view here considered, unless
we have some special relationship to the baby.



Second, *causings* are distinguished from *allowings*.
In a narrow sense of the word we will here stipulate, one
*allows* a death to occur when: (1) one's action merely removes
a defense the victim otherwise would have had against death; and (2)
such removal returns the victim to some morally appropriate baseline
(Kamm 1994, 1996; MacMahan 2003). Thus, mercy-killings, or euthanasia,
are outside of our deontological obligations (and thus eligible for
justification by good consequences) so long as one's act: (1) only
removes a defense against death that the agent herself had earlier
provided, such as disconnecting medical equipment that is keeping the
patient alive when that disconnecting is done by the medical personnel
that attached the patient to the equipment originally; and (2) the
equipment could justifiably have been hooked up to another patient,
where it could do some good, had the doctors known at the time of
connection what they know at the time of disconnection.



Third, one is said not to *cause* an evil such as a death when
one's acts merely *enable* (or aid) some other agent to cause
such evil (Hart and Honore 1985). Thus, one is not categorically
forbidden to drive the terrorists to where they can kill the policeman
(if the alternative is death of one's family), even though one would
be categorically forbidden to kill the policeman oneself (even where
the alternative is death of one's family) (Moore 2008). Nor is one
categorically forbidden to select which of a group of villagers shall
be unjustly executed by another who is pursuing his own purposes
(Williams 1973).



Fourth, one is said not to *cause* an evil such as a death when
one merely redirects a presently existing threat to many so that it
now threatens only one (or a few) (Thomson 1985). In the time-honored
example of the run-away trolley (Trolley), one may turn a trolley so
that it runs over one trapped workman so as to save five workmen
trapped on the other track, even though it is not permissible for an
agent to have initiated the movement of the trolley towards the one to
save five (Foot 1967; Thomson 1985).



Fifth, our agency is said not to be involved in mere
*accelerations* of evils about to happen anyway, as opposed to
*causing* such evils by doing acts necessary for such evils to
occur (G. Williams 1961; Brody 1996). Thus, when a victim is about to
fall to his death anyway, dragging a rescuer with him too, the rescuer
may cut the rope connecting them. Rescuer is accelerating, but not
causing, the death that was about to occur anyway.



All of these last five distinctions have been suggested to be part and
parcel of another centuries-old Catholic doctrine, that of the
doctrine of doing and allowing (see the entry on
 doing vs. allowing harm)
 (Moore 2008; Kamm 1994; Foot 1967; Quinn 1989). According to this
doctrine, one may not *cause* death, for that would be a
killing, a "doing;" but one may fail to prevent death,
allow (in the narrow sense) death to occur, enable another to cause
death, redirect a life-threatening item from many to one, or
accelerate a death about to happen anyway, if good enough consequences
are in the offing. As with the Doctrine of Double Effect, how
plausible one finds these applications of the doctrine of doing and
allowing will determine how plausible one finds this cause-based view
of human agency.



A third kind of agent-centered deontology can be obtained by simply
conjoining the other two agent-centered views (Hurd 1994). This view
would be that agency in the relevant sense requires both intending and
causing (i.e., acting) (Moore 2008). On this view, our agent-relative
obligations do not focus on causings or intentions separately; rather,
the content of such obligations is focused on *intended
causings*. For example, our deontological obligation with respect
to human life is neither an obligation not to kill nor an obligation
not to intend to kill; rather, it is an obligation not to
*murder*, that is, to kill in execution of an intention to
kill.



By requiring both intention and causings to constitute human agency,
this third view avoids the seeming overbreadth of our obligations if
either intention or action alone marked such agency. Suppose our
agent-relative obligation were not to do some *action* such as
kill an innocent -is that obligation breached by a merely
negligent killing, so that we deserve the serious blame of having
breached such a categorical norm (Hurd 1994)? (Of course, one might be
somewhat blameworthy on consequentialist grounds (Hurd 1995), or
perhaps not blameworthy at all (Moore and Hurd 2011).) Alternatively,
suppose our agent-relative obligation were not to intend to
kill--does that mean we could not justify forming such an
intention when good consequences would be the result, *and*
when we are sure we cannot act so as to fulfill such intention (Hurd
1994)? If our agent-relative obligation is neither of these alone, but
is rather, that we are not to kill in execution of an intention to
kill, both such instances of seeming overbreadth in the reach of our
obligations, are avoided.



Whichever of these three agent-centered theories one finds most
plausible, they each suffer from some common problems. A fundamental
worry is the moral unattractiveness of the focus on self that is the
nerve of any agent-centered deontology. The importance of each
person's agency to himself/herself has a narcissistic flavor to it
that seems unattractive to many. It seemingly justifies each of us
keeping our own moral house in order even at the expense of the world
becoming much worse. The worry is not that agent-centered deontology
is just another form of egoism, according to which the content of
one's duties exclusively concern oneself; even so, the character of
agent-relative duties is such that they betoken an emphasis on self
that is unattractive in the same way that such emphasis makes egoism
unattractive. Secondly, many find the distinctions invited by the
Doctrine of Double Effect and the (five versions of the) Doctrine of
Doing and Allowing to be either morally unattractive or conceptually
incoherent. Such critics find the differences between
intending/foreseeing, causing/omitting, causing/allowing,
causing/enabling, causing/redirecting, causing/accelerating to be
morally insignificant. (On act/omission (Rachels 1975); on
doing/allowing (Kagan 1989); on intending/foreseeing (Bennett 1981;
Davis 1984).) They urge, for example, that failing to prevent a death
one could easily prevent is as blameworthy as causing a death, so that
a morality that radically distinguishes the two is implausible.
Alternatively, such critics urge on conceptual grounds that no clear
distinctions can be drawn in these matters, that foreseeing with
certainty is indistinguishable from intending (Bennett 1981), that
omitting is one kind of causing (Schaffer 2012), and so forth.



Thirdly, there is the worry about "avoision." By casting
our categorical obligations in such agent-centered terms, one invites
a kind of manipulation that is legalistic and Jesuitical, what Leo
Katz dubs "avoision" (Katz 1996). Some think, for example,
that one can transform a prohibited intention into a permissible
predictive belief (and thus escape intention-focused forms of
agent-relative duty) by the simple expedient of finding some other end
with which to motivate the action in question.



Such criticisms of the agent-centered view of deontology drive most
who accept their force away from deontology entirely and to some form
of consequentialism. Alternatively, some of such critics are driven to
patient-centered deontology, which we discuss immediately below. Yet
still other of such critics attempt to articulate yet a fourth form of
agent-centered deontology. This might be called the "control
theory of agency." On this view, our agency is invoked whenever
our choices could have made a difference. This cuts across the
intention/foresight, act/omission, and doing/allowing distinctions,
because in all cases we *controlled* what happened through our
choices (Frey 1995). Yet as an account of deontology, this seems
worrisomely broad. It disallows consequentialist justifications
whenever: we foresee the death of an innocent; we omit to save, where
our saving would have made a difference and we knew it; where we
remove a life-saving device, knowing the patient will die. If
deontological norms are so broad in content as to cover all these
foreseeings, omittings, and allowings, then good consequences (such as
a net saving of innocent lives) are ineligible to justify them. This
makes for a wildly counterintuitive deontology: surely I can, for
example, justify not throwing the rope to one (and thus omit to save
him) in order to save two others equally in need. This breadth of
obligation also makes for a conflict-ridden deontology: by refusing to
cabin our categorical obligations by the distinctions of the Doctrine
of Double Effect and the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, situations of
conflict between our stringent obligations proliferate in a
troublesome way (Anscombe 1962).


### 2.2 Patient-Centered Deontological Theories



A second group of deontological moral theories can be classified, as
*patient*-centered, as distinguished from the
*agent*-centered version of deontology just considered. These
theories are rights-based rather than duty-based; and some versions
purport to be quite agent-neutral in the reasons they give moral
agents.



All patient-centered deontological theories are properly characterized
as theories premised on people's rights. An illustrative version
posits, as its core right, the right against being used only as means
for producing good consequences without one's consent. Such a
core right is not to be confused with more discrete rights, such as
the right against being killed, or being killed intentionally. It is a
right against being used by another for the user's or
others' benefit. More specifically, this version of
patient-centered deontological theories proscribes the *using*
of another's body, labor, and talent without the latter's
consent. One finds this notion expressed, albeit in different ways, in
the work of the so-called Right Libertarians (e.g., Robert Nozick,
Eric Mack), but also in the works of the Left-Libertarians as well
(e.g., Michael Otsuka, Hillel Steiner, Peter Vallentyne) (Nozick 1974;
Mack 2000; Steiner 1994; Vallentyne and Steiner 2000; Vallentyne,
Steiner, and Otsuka 2005). On this view, the scope of strong moral
duties--those that are the correlatives of others'
rights--is jurisdictionally limited and does not extend to
resources for producing the Good that would not exist in the absence
of those intruded upon--that is, their bodies, labors, and
talents. In addition to the Libertarians, others whose views include
this prohibition on using others include Quinn, Kamm, Alexander,
Ferzan, Gauthier, and Walen (Quinn 1989; Kamm 1996; Alexander 2016;
Alexander and Ferzan 2009, 2012; Gauthier 1986; Walen 2014, 2016).



Just as do agent-centered theories, so too do patient-centered
theories (such as that forbidding the using of another) seek to
explain common intuitions about such classic hypothetical cases as
Trolley and Transplant (or Fat Man) (Thomson 1985). In Trolley, a
runaway trolley will kill five workers unless diverted to a siding
where it will kill one worker. Most people regard it as permissible
and perhaps mandatory to switch the trolley to the siding. By
contrast, in Transplant, where a surgeon can kill one healthy patient
and transplant his organs to five dying patients, thereby saving their
lives, the universal reaction is condemnation. (The same is
by-and-large true in Fat Man, where the runaway trolley cannot be
switched off the main track but can be stopped before reaching the
five workers by pushing a fat man into its path, resulting in his
death.)



The injunction against using arguably accounts for these contrasting
reactions. After all, in each example, one life is sacrificed to save
five. Yet there appears to be a difference in the means through which
the net four lives are saved. In Transplant (and Fat Man), the doomed
person is used to benefit the others. They could not be saved in the
absence of his body. In Trolley, on the other hand, the doomed victim
is not used. The workers would be saved whether or not he is present
on the second track.



Notice, too, that this patient-centered libertarian version of
deontology handles Trolley, Transplant et al. differently from how
they are handled by agent-centered versions. The latter focus on the
agent's mental state or on whether the agent acted or caused the
victim's harm. The patient-centered theory focuses instead on
whether the victim's body, labor, or talents were the means by
which the justifying results were produced. So one who realizes that
by switching the trolley he can save five trapped workers and place
only one in mortal danger--and that the danger to the latter is
not the means by which the former will be saved--acts permissibly
on the patient-centered view if he switches the trolley *even if he
does so with the intention of killing the one worker*. Switching
the trolley is causally sufficient to bring about the consequences
that justify the act--the saving of net four
workers--*and it is so even in the absence of the one
worker's body, labor, or talents*. (The five would be saved
if the one escaped, was never on the track, or did not exist.) By
contrast, on the intent and intended action versions of agent-centered
theories, the one who switches the trolley does *not* act
permissibly if he acts with the intention to harm the one
worker. (This could be the case, for example, when the one who
switches the trolley does so to kill the one whom he hates, only
knowing that he will thereby save the other five workmen.) On the
patient-centered version, if an act is otherwise morally justifiable
by virtue of its balance of good and bad consequences, and the good
consequences are achieved without the necessity of using
anyone's body, labor, or talents without that person's
consent as the means by which they are achieved, then it is morally
immaterial (to the *permissibility* of the act but not to
the *culpability* of the actor) whether someone undertakes that
act with the intention to achieve its bad consequences. (This is true,
of course, only so long as the concept of *using* does not
implicitly refer to the intention of the user) (Alexander 2016). And
in assessing the culpability of risky conduct, any good consequences
must be discounted, not only by the perceived risk that they will not
occur, but also by the perceived risk that they will be brought about
by a using; for any such consequences, however good they otherwise
are, cannot be considered in determining the permissibility and,
derivatively, the culpability of acts (Alexander 2016).



Patient-centered deontologists handle differently other stock examples
of the agent-centered deontologist. Take the acceleration cases as an
example. When all will die in a lifeboat unless one is killed and
eaten; when Siamese twins are conjoined such that both will die unless
the organs of one are given to the other via an operation that kills
the first; when all of a group of soldiers will die unless the body of
one is used to hold down the enemy barbed wire, allowing the rest to
save themselves; when a group of villagers will all be shot by a
blood-thirsty tyrant unless they select one of their numbers to slake
the tyrants lust for death--in all such cases, the
causing/accelerating-distinguishing agent-centered deontologists would
permit the killing but the usings-focused patient-centered
deontologist would not. (For the latter, all killings are merely
accelerations of death.)



The restriction of deontological duties to *usings* of another
raises a sticky problem for those patient-centered deontological
theories that are based on the core right against using: how can they
account for the *prima facie* wrongs of killing, injuring, and
so forth when done not to use others as means, but for some other
purpose or for no purpose at all? The answer is that such
patient-centered deontological constraints must be supplemented by
consequentialist-derived moral norms to give an adequate account of
morality. Killing, injuring, and so forth will usually be
unjustifiable on a consequentialist calculus, especially if everyone's
interests are given equal regard. It is when killing and injuring are
otherwise justifiable that the deontological constraint against using
has its normative bite over and against what is already prohibited by
consequentialism. (This narrowness of patient-centered deontology
makes it counterintuitive to agent-centered deontologists, who regard
prohibitions on killing of the innocent, etc., as paradigmatically
deontological.)



The patient-centered version of deontology is aptly labeled
libertarian in that it is not plausible to conceive of not being aided
as being used by the one not aiding. Using is an action, not a failure
to act. More generally, it is counterintuitive to many to think that
any of us have a *right* to be aided. For if there were a
strong (that is, enforceable or coercible) duty to aid others, such
that, for example, *A* had a duty to aid *X*,
*Y*, and *Z*; and if *A* could more effectively
aid *X*, *Y*, and *Z* by coercing *B* and
*C* to aid them (as is *their* duty), then *A*
would have a duty to "use" *B* and *C* in
this way. For these reasons, any positive duties will not be
rights-based ones on the view here considered; they will be
consequentially-justified duties that can be trumped by the right not
to be coerced to perform them.



Patient-centered deontological theories are often conceived in
agent-neutral reason-giving terms. John has a right to the exclusive
use of his body, labor, and talents, and such a right gives everyone
equal reason to do actions respecting it. But this aspect of
patient-centered deontological theories gives rise to a particularly
virulent form of the so-called paradox of deontology (Scheffler 1988;
Heuer 2011)--that if respecting Mary's and Susan's
rights is as important morally as is protecting John's rights,
then why isn't violating John's rights permissible (or
even obligatory) when doing so is necessary to protect Mary's
and Susan's rights from being violated by others?
Patient-centered deontological theories might arguably do better if
they abandoned their pretense of being agent-neutral. They could
conceive of rights as giving agent-relative reasons to each actor to
refrain from doing actions violative of such rights. Take the core
right against being used without one's consent hypothesized
earlier. The correlative duty is not to use another without his
consent. If such duty is agent-relative, then the rights-based
deontologist (no less than the agent-centered deontologist) has the
conceptual resources to answer the paradox of deontology. That is,
each of us may not use John, even when such using of John would
minimize usings of John by others in the future. Such duties are
personal to each of us in that we may not justify our violating such a
duty now by preventing others' similar violations in the
future. Such personal duties are agent-centered in the sense that the
agency of each person is central to the duties of each person, so that
*your* using of another now cannot be traded off against other
possible usings at other times by other people.



Patient-centered deontologies are thus arguably better construed to be
agent-relative in the reasons they give. Even so construed, such
deontologies join agent-centered deontologies in facing the moral
(rather than the conceptual) versions of the paradox of deontology.
For a critic of either form of deontology might respond to the
categorical prohibition about using others as follows: If usings are
bad, then are not more usings worse than fewer? And if so, then is it
not odd to condemn acts that produce better states of affairs than
would occur in their absence? Deontologists of either stripe can just
deny that wrong acts on their account of wrongness can be translated
into bad states of affairs. Two wrong acts are not "worse"
than one. Such wrongs cannot be summed into anything of normative
significance. After all, the victim of a rights-violating using may
suffer less harm than others might have suffered had his rights not
been violated; yet one cannot, without begging the question against
deontological constraints, argue that therefore no constraint should
block minimizing harm. That is, the deontologist might reject the
comparability of states of affairs that involve violations and those
that do not. Similarly, the deontologist may reject the comparability
of states of affairs that involve more or fewer rights-violations
(Brook 2007). The deontologist might attempt to back this assertion by
relying upon the separateness of persons. Wrongs are only wrongs to
persons. A wrong to *Y* and a wrong to *Z* cannot be
added to make some greater wrong because there is no person who
suffers this greater wrong (cf. Taurek 1977).



This solution to the paradox of deontology, may seem attractive, but
it comes at a high cost. In Trolley, for example, where there is
neither agency nor using in the relevant senses and thus no bar to
switching, one cannot claim that it is better to switch and save the
five. For if the deaths of the five cannot be summed, their deaths are
not worse than the death of the one worker on the siding. Although
there is no deontological bar to switching, neither is the saving of a
net four lives a reason to switch. Worse yet, were the trolley heading
for the one worker rather than the five, there would be no reason not
to switch the trolley, so a net loss of four lives is no reason not to
switch the trolley. If the numbers don't count, they seemingly don't
count either way.



The problem of how to account for the significance of numbers without
giving up deontology and adopting consequentialism, and without
resurrecting the paradox of deontology, is one that a number of
deontologists are now working to solve (e.g., Kamm 1996; Scanlon 2003;
Otsuka 2006, Hsieh et al. 2006). Until it is solved, it will remain a
huge thorn in the deontologist's side.


### 2.3 Contractualist Deontological Theories



Somewhat orthogonal to the distinction between agent-centered versus
patient-centered deontological theories are contractualist
deontological theories. Morally wrong acts are, on such accounts,
those acts that would be forbidden by principles that people in a
suitably described social contract would accept (e.g., Rawls 1971;
Gauthier 1986), or that would be forbidden only by principles that
such people could not "reasonably reject" (e.g., Scanlon
2003).



In deontology, as elsewhere in ethics, is not entirely clear whether a
contractualist account is really normative as opposed to metaethical.
If such account is a first order normative account, it is probably
best construed as a patient-centered deontology; for the central
obligation would be to do onto others only that to which they have
consented. But so construed, modern contractualist accounts would
share the problems that have long bedeviled historical social contract
theories: how plausible is it that the "moral magic" of
consent is the first principle of morality? And how much of what is
commonly regarded as permissible to do to people can (in any realistic
sense of the word) be said to be actually consented to by them,
expressly or even implicitly?



In fact modern contractualisms look meta-ethical, and not normative.
Thomas Scanlon's contractualism, for example, which posits at its core
those norms of action that we can justify to each other, is best
construed as an ontological and epistemological account of moral
notions. The same may be said of David Gauthier's contractualism. Yet
so construed, metaethical contractualism as a method for deriving
moral norms does not necessarily lead to deontology as a first order
ethics. John Harsanyi, for example, argues that parties to the social
contract would choose utilitarianism over the principles John Rawls
argues would be chosen (Harsanyi 1973). Nor is it clear that
meta-ethical contractualism, when it does generate a deontological
ethic, favors either an agent centered or a patient centered version
of such an ethic.


### 2.4 Deontological Theories and Kant



If any philosopher is regarded as central to deontological moral
theories, it is surely Immanuel Kant. Indeed, each of the branches of
deontological ethics--the agent-centered, the patient-centered,
and the contractualist--can lay claim to being Kantian.



The agent-centered deontologist can cite Kant's locating the moral
quality of acts in the principles or maxims on which the agent acts
and not primarily in those acts' effects on others. For Kant, the only
thing unqualifiedly good is a good will (Kant 1785). The
patient-centered deontologist can, of course, cite Kant's injunction
against using others as mere means to one's end (Kant 1785). And the
contractualist can cite, as Kant's contractualist element, Kant's
insistence that the maxims on which one acts be capable of being
willed as a universal law--willed by all rational agents (Kant
1785). (See generally the entry on
 Kant.)


## 3. The Advantages of Deontological Theories



Having canvassed the two main types of deontological theories
(together with a contractualist variation of each), it is time to
assess deontological morality more generally. On the one hand,
deontological morality, in contrast to consequentialism, leaves space
for agents to give special concern to their families, friends, and
projects. At least that is so if the deontological morality contains
no strong duty of general beneficence, or, if it does, it places a cap
on that duty's demands. Deontological morality, therefore, avoids the
overly demanding and alienating aspects of consequentialism and
accords more with conventional notions of our moral duties.



Likewise, deontological moralities, unlike most views of
consequentialism, leave space for the supererogatory. A deontologist
can do more that is morally praiseworthy than morality demands. A
consequentialist cannot, assuming none of the consequentialists'
defensive maneuvers earlier referenced work. For such a pure or simple
consequentialist, if one's act is not morally demanded, it is morally
wrong and forbidden. Whereas for the deontologist, there are acts that
are neither morally wrong nor demanded, some--but only
some--of which are morally praiseworthy.



As we have seen, deontological theories all possess the strong
advantage of being able to account for strong, widely shared moral
intuitions about our duties better than can consequentialism. The
contrasting reactions to Trolley, Fat Man, Transplant, and other
examples earlier given, are illustrative of this.



Finally, deontological theories, unlike consequentialist ones, have
the potential for explaining why certain people have moral standing to
complain about and hold to account those who breach moral duties. For
the moral duties typically thought to be deontological in
character--unlike, say, duties regarding the
environment--are duties *to* particular people, not duties
to bring about states of affairs that no particular person has an
individual right to have realized.


## 4. The Weaknesses of Deontological Theories



On the other hand, deontological theories have their own weak spots.
The most glaring one is the seeming irrationality of our having duties
or permissions to make the world morally worse. Deontologists need
their own, non-consequentialist model of rationality, one that is a
viable alternative to the intuitively plausible,
"act-to-produce-the-best-consequences" model of
rationality that motivates consequentialist theories. Until this is
done, deontology will always be paradoxical. There are several
distinct hurdles that the deontologist must overcome.



One hurdle is to confront the apparent fact that careful reflection
about the degrees of wrongdoing that are possible under any single
moral norm does not make it easy to see deontological morality as
consisting of general, canonically-formulated texts (conformity to
which could then be said to constitute the distrinct form of practical
rationality unique to deontological ethics); rather, such apparently
simple texts as, "thou shalt not murder," look more like
mere epistemic aids summarizing a much more nuanced and detailed (and
thus less text-like) moral reality (Hurd and Moore
forthcoming).



A second hurdle is to find an answer to the inevitable question of
authority, assuming that there are such general texts. If it is
rational to conform one's behavior and one's choices to certain
general texts, as deontology claims, it is always in point to demand
the reasons making such texts authoritative for one's
decisions. Deferring one's own best judgment to the judgment enshrined
in some text is always prima facie paradoxical (see the entry on
 authority)
 and deontologists like everybody else need to justify such deference.
Hopefully they can do so other than by reference to some person-like
but omniscient Deity as the supposed source of such texts, because
many deontologists cannot accept such theism (Moore 1995). Moreover,
even for those with theistic commitments, they may prefer to join
Kant's insistence that ethics proceed from reason alone, even in a
theistic world.



The third hurdle exists even if the first two are crossed
adequately. This hurdle is to deal with the seeming demand of
deontological ethics that on occasion one's categorical obligations
require one to preserve the purity of one's own moral agency at the
cost of having one's actions make the world be in a morally worse
state of affairs--at least, "worse" in the agent-neutral sense of
the word used by consequentialists. Patient-centered versions of
deontology cannot easily escape this problem, as we have shown. It is
not even clear that they have the conceptual resources to make agency
important enough to escape this moral paradox. Yet even agent-centered
versions face this paradox; having the conceptual resources (of agency
and agent-relative reasons) is not the same as making it plausible
just how a secular, objective morality can allow each person's agency
to be so uniquely crucial to that person.



Moreover, it is crucial for deontologists to deal with the conflicts
that seem to exist between certain duties, and between certain rights.
For more information, please see the entry on
 moral dilemmas.
 Kant's bold proclamation that "a conflict of duties is
inconceivable" (Kant 1780, p. 25) is the conclusion
wanted, but reasons for believing it are difficult to produce. The
intending/foreseeing, doing/allowing, causing/aiding, and related
distinctions certainly reduce potential conflicts for the
agent-centered versions of deontology; whether they can totally
eliminate such conflicts is a yet unresolved question.



One well known approach to deal with the possibility of conflict
between deontological duties is to reduce the categorical force of
such duties to that of only "*prima facie*" duties
(Ross 1930, 1939). This idea is that conflict between merely *prima
facie* duties is unproblematic so long as it does not infect what
one is categorically obligated to do, which is what overall, concrete
duties mandate. Like other softenings of the categorical force of
deontological obligation we mention briefly below (threshold
deontology, mixed views), the *prima facie* duty view is in
some danger of collapsing into a kind of consequentialism. This
depends on whether "*prima facie*" is read
epistemically or not, and on (1) whether any good consequences are
eligible to justify breach of *prima facie* duties; (2) whether
only such consequences over some threshold can do so; or (3) whether
only threatened breach of other deontological duties can do so.



Thirdly, there is the manipulability worry mentioned before with
respect to agent-centered versions of deontology. To the extent
potential conflict is eliminated by resort to the Doctrine of Double
Effect, the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, and so forth (and it is
not clear to what extent patient-centered versions rely on these
doctrines and distinctions to mitigate potential conflict), then a
potential for "avoision" is opened up. Such avoision is
the manipulation of means (using omissions, foresight, risk,
allowings, aidings, acceleratings, redirectings, etc.) to achieve
permissibly what otherwise deontological morality would forbid (see
Katz 1996). Avoision is an undesirable feature of any ethical system
that allows such strategic manipulation of its doctrines.



Fourth, there is what might be called the paradox of relative
stringency. There is an aura of paradox in asserting that all
deontological duties are categorical--to be done no matter the
consequences--and yet asserting that some of such duties are more
stringent than others. A common thought is that "there cannot be
degrees of wrongness with intrinsically wrong acts..."
(Frey 1995, p. 78, n.3; also Hurka 2019). Yet relative
stringency--"degrees of wrongness"--seems forced
upon the deontologist by one if not two considerations. First, duties
of differential stringency can be weighed against one another if there
is conflict between them, so that a conflict-resolving, overall duty
becomes possible if duties can be more or less stringent. Second, when
we punish for the wrongs consisting in our violation of deontological
duties, we (rightly) do not punish all violations equally. The greater
the wrong, the greater the punishment deserved; and relative
stringency of duty violated (or importance of rights) seems the best
way of making sense of greater versus lesser wrongs (Hurd and Moore
forthcoming).



Fifth, there are situations--unfortunately not all of them
thought experiments--where compliance with deontological norms
will bring about disastrous consequences. To take a stock example of
much current discussion, suppose that unless *A* violates the
deontological duty not to torture an innocent person (*B*),
ten, or a thousand, or a million other innocent people will die
because of a hidden nuclear device. If *A* is forbidden by
deontological morality from torturing *B*, many would regard
that as a reductio *ad absurdum* of deontology.



Deontologists have six possible ways of dealing with such "moral
catastrophes" (although only two of these are very plausible).
First, they can just bite the bullet and declare that sometimes doing
what is morally right will have tragic results but that allowing such
tragic results to occur is still the right thing to do. Complying with
moral norms will surely be difficult on those occasions, but the moral
norms apply nonetheless with full force, overriding all other
considerations. We might call this the Kantian response, after Kant's
famous hyperbole: "Better the whole people should perish,"
than that injustice be done (Kant 1780, p. 100). One might also
call this the absolutist conception of deontology, because such a view
maintains that conformity to norms has absolute force and not merely
great weight.



This first response to "moral catastrophes," which is to
ignore them, might be further justified by denying that moral
catastrophes, such as a million deaths, are really a million times
more catastrophic than one death. This is the so-called
"aggregation" problem, which we alluded to in
 section 2.2
 in discussing the paradox of deontological constraints. John Taurek
famously argued that it is a mistake to assume harms to two persons
are twice as bad as a comparable harm to one person. For each of the
two suffers only his own harm and not the harm of the other (Taurek
1977). Taurek's argument can be employed to deny the existence of
moral catastrophes and thus the worry about them that deontologists
would otherwise have. Robert Nozick also stresses the separateness of
persons and therefore urges that there is no entity that suffers
double the harm when each of two persons is harmed (Nozick 1974). (Of
course, Nozick, perhaps inconsistently, also acknowledges the
existence of moral catastrophes.) Most deontologists reject Taurek's
radical conclusion that we need not be morally more obligated to avert
harm to the many than to avert harm to the few; but they do accept the
notion that harms should not be aggregated. Deontologists' approaches
to the nonaggregation problem when the choice is between saving the
many and saving the few are: (1) save the many so as to acknowledge
the importance of each of the extra persons; (2) conduct a weighted
coin flip; (3) flip a coin; or (4) save anyone you want (a denial of
moral catastrophes) (Broome 1998; Doggett 2013; Doucet 2013; Dougherty
2013; Halstead 2016: Henning 2015; Hirose 2007, 2015; Hsieh et al.
2006; Huseby 2011; Kamm 1993; Rasmussen 2012; Saunders 2009; Scanlon
2003; Suikkanen 2004; Timmerman 2004; Wasserman and Strudler
2003).



The second plausible response is for the deontologist to abandon
Kantian absolutism for what is usually called "threshold
deontology." A threshold deontologist holds that deontological
norms govern up to a point despite adverse consequences; but when the
consequences become so dire that they cross the stipulated threshold,
consequentialism takes over (Moore 1997, ch. 17). *A*
may not torture *B* to save the lives of two others, but he may
do so to save a thousand lives if the "threshold" is
higher than two lives but lower than a thousand.



There are two varieties of threshold deontology that are worth
distinguishing. On the simple version, there is some fixed threshold
of awfulness beyond which morality's categorical norms no longer have
their overriding force. Such a threshold is fixed in the sense that it
does not vary with the stringency of the categorical duty being
violated. The alternative is what might be called "sliding scale
threshold deontology." On this version, the threshold varies in
proportion to the degree of wrong being done--the wrongness of
stepping on a snail has a lower threshold (over which the wrong can be
justified) than does the wrong of stepping on a baby.



Threshold deontology (of either stripe) is an attempt to save
deontological morality from the charge of fanaticism. It is similar to
the "*prima facie* duty" version of deontology
developed to deal with the problem of conflicting duties, yet
threshold deontology is usually interpreted with such a high threshold
that it more closely mimics the outcomes reached by a
"pure," absolutist kind of deontology. Threshold
deontology faces several theoretical difficulties. Foremost among them
is giving a theoretically tenable account of the location of such a
threshold, either absolutely or on a sliding scale (Alexander 2000;
Ellis 1992; Moore 2019; Arneson 2019; Cole 2019; Alexander 2019). Why
is the threshold for torture of the innocent at one thousand lives,
say, as opposed to nine hundred or two thousand? Another problem is
that whatever the threshold, as the dire consequences approach it,
counter-intuitive results appear to follow. For example, it may be
permissible, if we are one-life-at-risk short of the threshold, to
pull one more person into danger who will then be saved, along with
the others at risk, by killing an innocent person (Alexander 2000).
Thirdly, there is some uncertainty about how one is to reason after
the threshold has been reached: are we to calculate at the margin on
straight consequentialist grounds, use an agent-weighted mode of
summing, or do something else? A fourth problem is that threshold
deontology threatens to collapse into a kind of consequentialism.
Indeed, it can be perhaps shown that the sliding scale version of
threshold deontology is extensionally equivalent to an agency-weighted
form of consequentialism (Sen 1982).



The remaining four strategies for dealing with the problem of dire
consequence cases all have the flavor of evasion by the deontologist.
Consider first the famous view of Elizabeth Anscombe: such cases (real
or imagined) can never present themselves to the consciousness of a
truly moral agent because such agent will realize it is immoral to
even think about violating moral norms in order to avert disaster
(Anscombe 1958; Geach 1969; Nagel 1979). Such rhetorical excesses
should be seen for what they are, a peculiar way of stating Kantian
absolutism motivated by an impatience with the question.



Another response by deontologists, this one most famously associated
with Bernard Williams, shares some of the "don't think about
it" features of the Anscombean response. According to Williams
(1973), situations of moral horror are simply "beyond
morality," and even beyond reason. (This view is reminiscent of
the ancient view of natural necessity, revived by Sir Francis Bacon,
that such cases are beyond human law and can only be judged by the
natural law of instinct.) Williams tells us that in such cases we just
act. Interestingly, Williams contemplates that such
"existentialist" decision-making will result in our doing
what we have to do in such cases--for example, we torture the
innocent to prevent nuclear holocaust.



Surely this is an unhappy view of the power and reach of human law,
morality, or reason. Indeed, Williams (like Bacon and Cicero before
him) thinks there is an answer to what should be done, albeit an
answer very different than Anscombe's. But both views share the
weakness of thinking that morality and even reason runs out on us when
the going gets tough.



Yet another strategy is to divorce completely the moral appraisals of
acts from the blameworthiness or praiseworthiness of the agents who
undertake them, even when those agents are fully cognizant of the
moral appraisals. So, for example, if *A* tortures innocent
*B* to save a thousand others, one can hold that *A*'s
act is morally wrong but also that *A* is morally praiseworthy
for having done it.



Deontology does have to grapple with how to mesh deontic judgments of
wrongness with "hypological" (Zimmerman 2002) judgments of
blameworthiness (Alexander 2004). Yet it would be an oddly cohering
morality that condemned an act as wrong yet praised the doer of it.
Deontic and hypological judgments ought to have more to do with each
other than that. Moreover, it is unclear what action-guiding potential
such an oddly cohered morality would have: should an agent facing such
a choice avoid doing wrong, or should he go for the praise?



The last possible strategy for the deontologist in order to deal with
dire consequences, other than by denying their existence, as per
Taurek, is to distinguish moral reasons from all-things-considered
reasons and to argue that whereas moral reasons dictate obedience to
deontological norms even at the cost of catastrophic consequences,
all-things-considered reasons dictate otherwise. (This is one reading
of Bernard William's famous discussion of moral luck, where non-moral
reasons seemingly can trump moral reasons (Williams 1975, 1981); this
is also a strategy some consequentialists (e.g., Portmore 2003) seize
as well in order to handle the demandingness and alienation problems
endemic to consequentialism.) But like the preceding strategy, this
one seems desperate. Why should one even care that moral reasons align
with deontology if the important reasons, the all-things-considered
reasons that actually govern decisions, align with
consequentialism?


## 5. Deontology's Relation(s) to Consequentialism Reconsidered



The perceived weaknesses of deontological theories have led some to
consider how to eliminate or at least reduce those weaknesses while
preserving deontology's advantages. One way to do this is to embrace
both consequentialism and deontology, combining them into some kind of
a mixed theory. Given the differing notions of rationality underlying
each kind of theory, this is easier said than done. After all, one
cannot simply weigh agent-relative reasons against agent-neutral
reasons, without stripping the former sorts of reasons of their
distinctive character.



A time-honored way of reconciling opposing theories is to allocate
them to different jurisdictions. Tom Nagel's reconciliation of the two
theories is a version of this, inasmuch as he allocates the
agent-neutral reasons of consequentialism to our
"objective" viewpoint, whereas the agent-relative reasons
of deontology are seen as part of our inherent subjectivity (Nagel
1986). Yet Nagel's allocations are non-exclusive; the same situation
can be seen from either subjective or objective viewpoints, meaning
that it is mysterious how we are to combine them into some overall
view.



A less mysterious way of combining deontology with consequentialism is
to assign to each a jurisdiction that is exclusive of the other. One
possibility here is to regard the agent-neutral reasons of
consequentialism as a kind of default rationality/morality in the
sense that when an agent-relative permission or obligation applies, it
governs, but in the considerable logical space where neither applies,
consequentialism holds sway (Moore 2008). Remembering that for the
threshold deontologist, consequentialist reasons may still determine
right action even in areas governed by agent-relative obligations or
permissions, once the level of bad consequences crosses the relevant
threshold (Moore 2012).


### 5.1 Making no concessions to consequentialism: a purely deontological rationality?



In contrast to mixed theories, deontologists who seek to keep their
deontology pure hope to expand agent-relative reasons to cover all of
morality and yet to mimic the advantages of consequentialism. Doing
this holds out the promise of denying sense to the otherwise damning
question, how could it be moral to make (or allow) the world to be
worse (for they deny that there is any states-of-affairs
"worseness" in terms of which to frame such a question)
(Foot 1985). To make this plausible, one needs to expand the coverage
of agent-relative reasons to cover what is now plausibly a matter of
consequentialist reasons, such as positive duties to strangers.
Moreover, deontologists taking this route need a content to the
permissive and obligating norms of deontology that allows them to
mimic the outcomes making consequentialism attractive. This requires a
picture of morality's norms that is extremely detailed in content, so
that what looks like a consequentialist balance can be generated by a
complex series of norms with extremely detailed priority rules and
exception clauses (Richardson 1990). Few consequentialists will
believe that this is a viable enterprise.


### 5.2 Making no concessions to deontology: a purely consequentialist rationality?



The mirror image of the pure deontologist just described is the
indirect or two-level consequentialist. For this view too seeks to
appropriate the strengths of both deontology and consequentialism, not
by embracing both, but by showing that an appropriately defined
version of one can do for both. The indirect consequentialist, of
course, seeks to do this from the side of consequentialism alone.



Yet as many have argued (Lyons 1965; Alexander 1985), indirect
consequentialism collapses either into: blind and irrational
rule-worship ("why follow the rules when not doing so produces
better consequences?"); direct consequentialism ("acts in
conformity to the rules rather miraculously produce better
consequences in the long run"); or nonpublicizability
("ordinary folks should be instructed to follow the rules but
should not be told of the ultimate consequentialist basis for doing
so, lest they depart from the rules mistakenly believing better
consequences will result"). For more information, please see the
entry on
 rule consequentialism.
 Nor can the indirect consequentialist adequately explain why those
who violate the indirect consequentialist's rules have
"wronged" those who might be harmed as a result, that is,
why the latter have a personal complaint against the former. (This is
true irrespective of whether the rule-violation produces good
consequences; but it is especially so when good consequences result
from the rule-violation.) The bottom line is that if deontology has
intuitive advantages over consequentialism, it is far from obvious
whether those advantages can be captured by moving to indirect
consequentialism, even if there is a version of indirect
consequentialism that could avoid the dire consequences problem that
bedevils deontological theories.


## 6. Deontology and Uncertainty About Outcomes



Recently, deontologists have begun to ask how an actor should evaluate
courses of action in which it is uncertain whether a deontological
constraint will be violated. For example, should one detonate dynamite
in a mining operation if there is a chance that the explosion will
cause the Fat Man to tumble into the path of the trolley that would
otherwise kill five? (Assume that were the chance the same that the
explosion would instead divert the trolley in Trolley, killing one but
saving five, the detonation would be permissible.) Or should one take
a drive to observe the scenery if there is a slightly increased chance
that, because of the possibility of traffic, doing so will cause one
to miss a lunch one had promised to attend? Whether deontological
constraints focus on agents' intentions or beliefs, or whether they
focus on agents' counting positively in their deliberations others'
use as means, how should the uncertainty of outcomes be taken into
account by deontologists? This question has been addressed by Aboodi,
Borer, and Enoch (2008); Alexander (2016; 2018); Lazar (2015; 2017a,
2017b, 2018); Smith (2014); Tarsney (2018); and Tomlin (2019).


## 7. Deontological Theories and Metaethics



Deontological theories are normative theories. They do not presuppose
any particular position on moral ontology or on moral epistemology.
Presumably, a deontologist can be a moral realist of either the
natural (moral properties are identical to natural properties) or
nonnatural (moral properties are not themselves natural properties
even if they are nonreductively related to natural properties)
variety. Or a deontologist can be an expressivist, a constructivist, a
transcendentalist, a conventionalist, or a Divine command theorist
regarding the nature of morality. Likewise, a deontologist can claim
that we know the content of deontological morality by direct
intuition, by Kantian reflection on our normative situation, or by
reaching reflective equilibrium between our particular moral judgments
and the theories we construct to explain them (theories of
intuitions).



Nonetheless, although deontological theories can be agnostic regarding
metaethics, some metaethical accounts seem less hospitable than others
to deontology. For example, the stock furniture of deontological
normative ethics--rights, duties, permissions--fits uneasily
in the realist-naturalist's corner of the metaethical universe. (Which
is why many naturalists, if they are moral realists in their
meta-ethics, are consequentialists in their ethics.) Nonnatural
realism, conventionalism, transcendentalism, and Divine command seem
more hospitable metaethical homes for deontology. (For example, the
paradox of deontology above discussed may seem more tractable if
morality is a matter of personal directives of a Supreme Commander to
each of his human subordinates.) If these rough connections hold, then
weaknesses with those metaethical accounts most hospitable to
deontology will weaken deontology as a normative theory of action.
Some deontologists have thus argued that these connections need not
hold and that a naturalist-realist meta-ethics can ground a
deontological ethics (Moore 2004).