Backgrounding Agent-Relativity

Abstract Deontological constraints, it is often observed, are such that they ought not to be violated, at least sometimes, even in order to minimize constraint violations. This feature of deontological constraints arguably requires agent-relativity – there must be a way in which my own violations carry more weight with me than others’. Still, if someone knows that they can either bring about one violation or five, if they pause to ask “But wait, will the single violation be mine?” their question, I want to insist, is inappropriate. Utilizing an analogy from the epistemic case of peer disagreement (where giving more weight to one’s own belief compared to one’s peer seems chauvinistic, but where some believer-relativity can nevertheless still be maintained), I argue that the right way for deontologists to think about agent-relativity is not in terms of the considerations we take into account in deliberation, but rather as something coloring the deliberating itself. In this way, agent-relativity has to be backgrounded. In this paper, I defend this picture, and pursue some of its implications – for how we should think of the paradox of deontology, the intending-foreseeing distinction, cases of my own future constraint violations, and the project of consequentializing deontology.