On this view, our agent-relative obligations and permissions have as their content certain kinds of actions: we are obligated not to kill innocents for example.
On this view, our agent-relative obligations do not focus on causings or intentions separately; rather, the content of such obligations is focused on intended causings.
Remembering that for the threshold deontologist, consequentialist reasons may still determine right action even in areas governed by agent-relative obligations or permissions, once the level of bad consequences crosses the relevant threshold (Moore 2012).
Thus, an agent-relative obligation is an obligation for a particular agent to take or refrain from taking some action; and because it is agent-relative, the obligation does not necessarily give anyone else a reason to support that action.
We may have an obligation to save it, but this will not be an agent-relative obligation, on the view here considered, unless we have some special relationship to the baby.
If our agent-relative obligation is neither of these alone, but is rather, that we are not to kill in execution of an intention to kill, both such instances of seeming overbreadth in the reach of our obligations, are avoided.
Suppose our agent-relative obligation were not to do some action such as kill an innocent –is that obligation breached by a merely negligent killing, so that we deserve the serious blame of having breached such a categorical norm (Hurd 1994)?
Do we have such genuinely agent-relative special obligations?
When and if we are able to defend the claim that we have fundamental agent-relative special obligations, we need to determine which special obligations we have.
Relative to pension obligations discounted at the same rate, we find that unfunded retiree health care liabilities are ½ the size of unfunded pension obligations.
