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It is not the case that Threshold deontologists like Moore and Alexander hold that sufficiently large aggregates of rights violations can override agent-relative constraints.
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Reasons For
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Reason for
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1.
Threshold deontology lacks principled criteria for determining when aggregates become 'sufficiently large' to override constraints.
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2.
If rights can be overridden by aggregate consequences, rights lose their normative force as constraints and become merely rebuttable preferences.
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3.
Historical atrocities (utopian projects, genocides) were justified by claiming large-scale benefits outweigh individual violations—threshold reasoning enables this.
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Reasons Against
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Reason against
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1.
Moral intuition: killing one innocent person to save a million is permissible, suggesting aggregate consequences can override individual rights.
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2.
Pure agent-relative constraints would permit absurd outcomes: protecting one person's right while a billion suffer preventable deaths.
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3.
Rights themselves derive moral force from protecting human interests; sufficiently large aggregates of violated interests justify overriding constraints.
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