Deontologists are united in asserting that there are side-constraints on permissible action, prohibiting acts of murder, theft, infidelity, etc., even in cases where performing such acts would make things better overall from an impartial standpoint. These constraints are enshrined in the vocabulary of rights apply even when violating those constraints would lead to fewer constraint-violations overall: I am prohibited from killing an innocent even when doing so is the only way to prevent you from killing five. However, deontologists are divided over whether we have a duty to violate a smaller number of rights when this is necessary to prevent ourselves from later violating a larger number of rights that are at least as stringent. I argue that individuals do have such a duty, a duty which follows from widely accepted consistency constraints on choice.

义务论者一致断言，允许的行为存在附带限制，禁止谋杀、盗窃、不忠等行为，即使从公正的角度来看，执行此类行为会使整体情况变得更好。这些限制被载入权利词汇表，即使违反这些限制会导致总体上更少的违反限制：我被禁止杀死一个无辜的人，即使这样做是防止你杀死五个人的唯一方法。然而，道义论者在我们是否有义务侵犯少数权利时存在分歧，这是必要的，以防止我们以后侵犯至少同样严格的大量权利。我认为个人确实有这样的责任，