ABSTRACT
This chapter examines three putative accounts of agent-relativity—Amartya Sen’s, based on relativity of permissibility; Thomas Nagel’s, based on relativity of reasons; and David McNaughton and Piers Rawling’s, based on relativity of moral rules—and found reasons for rejecting them all. Moral reasons stemming from an agent’s personal projects are strongly agent-relative: their influence will be strongly reflected in the preferability rankings of agents who are committed to the projects from which they stem, and will not be reflected at all in other agents’ preferability rankings. The moral preferability account is capable of detecting species of agent-relativity that will not be detected by McNaughton and Rawling’s principle-based account. Agent-relativistic consequentialism is the combination of the following two ideas. First, that agents are always morally required to bring about the best available state of affairs; and second, that facts regarding which particular states of affairs are better than which others will not remain constant, but rather will vary from agent to agent.
