Deontology in Graphs: An Elucidation

Abstract

In this paper, I grapple with four topics that I consider core to what I call “basic deontology,” the deontology that concerns what people are duty bound to do as agents and what may be done to them as patients based solely on their interactions as people. The four topics I represent and discuss in graphs that I build up serially from a very simple graph to a complex, composite graph are: (1) the duty to provide aid to others; (2) harm that may permissibly be caused to others, whether as a side effect of pursuing some good end or as a means of doing so; (3) the right to do wrong; and (4) the limits of deontology and what is permissible when those limits breakdown, i.e., threshold deontology.

Keywords: Deontology, duty to aid, permissible harm, right to do wrong, threshold deontology