Agent-centered restrictions are widely accepted both in commonsense morality and across social and legal institutions, making it all the more striking that we have yet to ground them in a compelling theoretical rationale. This dissertation amounts to an effort to fill that gap by seeking out a new principled basis for justifying such constraints. I devote each of the first three chapters, respectively, to the three established deontological normative ethical theories: Rossian intuitionism, Kantianism, and Neo-Thomism. In each of these chapters, I lay out the relevant portion of the view’s deontological apparatus, analyzing it both for its plausibility as a whole and for its ability to justify constraints of the appropriate shape. After assessing and rejecting all three approaches, I devote the next two chapters to developing a new rationale for grounding constraints—one that avoids the pitfalls indicated in the prominent historical alternatives. Specifically, I anchor constraints in the distinction between the agent-neutral and agent-relative points of view, basing them in the widely accepted psychological fact of the natural independence of the personal point of view.
Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/35718 |
Date | 18 July 2013 |
Creators | Sinha, Gaurav Alex |
Contributors | Hurka, Thomas |
Source Sets | University of Toronto |
Language | en_US |
Detected Language | English |
Type | Thesis |
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