RIGHTS, PRACTICAL DELIBERATION, AND ACTION

I discuss two ways of understanding (moral) rights from the perspective of practical deliberation: specificationism and generalism. After rejecting prominent objections to specificationism made from the practical angle, I argue that the specificationist approach to rights is problematic since it denies the intermediate role that rights usually have in practical reasoning, without giving strong reasons to dismiss an intuitive way of thinking about these normative standards. Even though generalism does take into account such an intermediate role, it needs to avoid the charge that it reduces rights to ordinary moral reasons, depriving these normative standards of their special normative force. I suggest that understanding rights as exclusionary reasons is a promising way to avoid this significant charge. I defend this possibility from possible objections.