Abstract

Introduction Non-consequentialists often attempt to capture a familiar, if slightly elusive, sense of moral wrongness. In particular, many non-consequentialists give a central role to the idea that there is a distinction to be made between acting wrongly and wronging someone. To explain, consider the difference between my duty not to trample sunflowers and my duty not to trample you. In the case of sunflowers, I might act wrongly in trampling them without good reason, but it does not seem that I can wrong them by doing so. In juxtaposition, if I trample you it does not seem that I have merely acted wrongly, but that I have wronged you in particular because I owe it to you not to do so. Call this the Wronging Distinction.Arguably, the Wronging Distinction is important because it offers one possible way of explaining the intuitive authority of moral reasons. Deontic constraints, for example, seem to carry an unusual normative stringency insofar as they seem to be non-optional. Ted, for i ..