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    Acquiring special obligations does not reduce what a mora... — Carmelics
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    Home/Moral Responsibility
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    Acquiring special obligations does not reduce what a moral agent owes to other persons generally; it simply adds more obligations on top of existing general duties.

    Moral ResponsibilityVirtue Ethics
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    Reasons For

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    Reason for
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    • 1.A moral agent has a general duty of benevolence toward all persons.
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    • 2.Special relationships (promiser/promisee, creditor/debtor, spouse, parent/child, friend, compatriot) generate additional obligations beyond the duty of benevolence.
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    • 3.The more special relationships one stands in, the more obligations one acquires.
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    Reasons Against

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    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Special obligations generate agent-relative reasons that structurally override, not merely outweigh, competing general duties in cases of genuine conflict.
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    • 2.When an obligation is systematically overridden by competing obligations, it is functionally equivalent to a diminished obligation for that agent in that context.
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    • 3.Therefore, acquiring special obligations does not merely add to an agent's moral burden but reorganizes the priority structure of all their obligations, effectively reducing the action-guiding force of general duties.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.On Samuel Scheffler's account, special obligations are partly constitutive of personal integrity and identity, not external additions to a pre-existing moral baseline.
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    • 2.If special obligations are constitutive of the agent who bears general duties, then the general duties themselves are shaped by and filtered through those special commitments.
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    • 3.Therefore, the general duty of benevolence that exists 'prior to' special obligations is an abstraction that never actually operates independently, meaning special obligations partly define rather than merely supplement it.
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    Topics

    Moral ResponsibilityVirtue Ethics

    Connections

    1 topic

    Justice & Punishment2 linked

    Related

    A moral agent has a general duty of benevolence toward all persons.Adding obligations is not the same as subtracting or diminishing prior obligatio...If special obligations are constitutive of the agent who bears general duties, t...On Samuel Scheffler's account, special obligations are partly constitutive of pe...
    +6 moreShow less
    Special obligations generate agent-relative reasons that structurally override, ...Special relationships (promiser/promisee, creditor/debtor, spouse, parent/child,...The more special relationships one stands in, the more obligations one acquires.Therefore, acquiring special obligations does not merely add to an agent's moral...Therefore, the general duty of benevolence that exists 'prior to' special obliga...When an obligation is systematically overridden by competing obligations, it is ...

    Similar

    Special obligations are not genuinely special but only derivatively so83%If moral obligations are grounded in God's requirements rather than in...80%Voluntarism holds that special obligations must be contractual (i.e., ...80%Adding obligations is not the same as subtracting or diminishing prior...79%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: special-obligations
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    One potential response is to insist that upon acquiring special obligations, a moral agent does not owe less to other persons, but, rather, simply owes more to her intimates. Thus, in addition to our duty of benevolence, we have, as Ross claimed, special obligations to those who “stand to me in the relation of promisee to promiser, of creditor to debtor, of wife to husband, of child to parent, of friend to friend, of fellow countryman to fellow countryman, and the like” (19). The more such relat
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit