The nature of duty and its limits - a podcast by Cambridge University

Keynote paper given by David Owens (University of Reading). On one influential theory of promising, promising involves the transfer of a right to determine whether you do something. So when I successfully promise you that I'll be at the bus stop at a certain time, I transfer to you the right to determine whether I'll show up. Advocates of the'transfer theory'include both the dead (like Grotius, Hobbes and Locke) and the living (like Gary Watson and Seana Shiffrin). One apparent implication of this theory is that I can successfully promise to do only what I have a right to do, so if I have no right to be at the bus stop (e.g. because I've promised to be elsewhere) then I can't successfully promise to show up. So my promissory duties are limited by my pre- promissory rights. This paper considers the merits of the transfer theory and the plausibility of this implication.

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