Skip to main content

School of Philosophy

  • Home
  • People
  • Events
    • Event series
    • Conferences
      • Past conferences
    • Past events
  • News
    • Audio/Video Recordings
  • Research
  • Study with us
    • Prizes and scholarships
  • Visit us
  • Contact us

Centres & Projects

  • Centre for Consciousness
  • Centre for Moral, Social and Political Theory
  • Centre for Philosophy of the Sciences
  • Humanising Machine Intelligence

Related Sites

  • Research School of Social Sciences
  • ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences

Centre for Consciousness

Related Sites

Centre for Moral, Social and Political Theory

Centre for Philosophy of the Sciences

School of Philosophy

Administrator

Breadcrumb

HomeUpcoming EventsMatthew Hammerton (ANU): A Trilemma For Deontology
Matthew Hammerton (ANU): A Trilemma for Deontology

All deontological moral theories are committed to agent-centered constraints. In this paper I argue that agent-centered constraints, as standardly formulated, are ambiguous and have three distinct interpretations. Thus, any deontologist has to clarify which of these three interpretations her theory endorses. However, I argue that once we shift through the various options we discover a trilemma for deontology. The deontologist must either accept that: (i) deontological constraints are maximising-state rules, or (ii) deontological constraints give no moral advice in cases where commonsense morality expects moral advice, or (iii) deontology adopts a counterintuitive decision procedure as a contrary-to-duty obligation. I argue that each of these options is a tough bullet to bite.

Date & time

  • Tue 08 Mar 2016, 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Location

Coombs Seminar Room A

Event Series

Philsoc seminars