If true, as de-extinction advocate Mike Archer suggests (Woodford 2000), there may be deontological reasons that support cloning mammoths if humans drove them to extinction.
Not only egoistic reasons but arguably deontological reasons and reasons arising out of special relations to one's nearest and dearest would stand refuted, as would what Nagel later referred to as 'reasons of autonomy' (see Nagel 1986: 165).
This is a very controversial explanation, but our point is simply that if the main premise of this explanation (a kind of pluralism involving utilitarian reasons and deontological reasons) is true then it very plausibly is a necessary truth.
Philosophers have also offered deontological grounds for protecting informational privacy (Benn 1988).
Today, however, the dominant view is that the deontological understanding of justification is unsuitable for the purposes of epistemology.
(DJN VII.2.1 2) Contra Aristotle, the state is not a natural or ideal stage of human development emerging spontaneously from humans' desire to live together (DJN VII.1.2 3), but an adventitious, willed self-help device broadly enjoined by natural law in either or both a prudential (i.e., recommended by sound reason) or deontological (i.e., commanded by God) sense.
On the whole, we observe a mix of deontological and consequentialist reasoning in the PTs' decision making.
The last possible strategy for the deontologist in order to deal with dire consequences, other than by denying their existence, as per Taurek, is to distinguish moral reasons from all-things-considered reasons and to argue that whereas moral reasons dictate obedience to deontological norms even at the cost of catastrophic consequences, all-things-considered reasons dictate otherwise.
She may even regard her deontological intuition as providing sufficient reason to believe that such acts are wrong, even though she thinks that on balance she has more reason to believe that such acts are permissible.
In spite of these worries, many philosophers have characterized the reasons corresponding to deontological restrictions as agent-relative.
