Consequentializing agent-centered restrictions: A Kantsequentialist approach

Abstract

There 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.