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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
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    A consequentialist must justify punishment as a cost-effe... — Carmelics
    Home/Justice & Punishment
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    A consequentialist must justify punishment as a cost-effective means to certain independently identifiable goods.

    Justice & Punishment
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

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    Reason for
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    • Consequentialism requires that actions (including institutional practices like punishment) be justified by the goods they produce.
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    Reasons Against

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    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Rule consequentialists justify punishment by appeal to rules whose general acceptance maximizes welfare, not by evaluating each punitive act individually.
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    • 2.If the rule 'punish offenders proportionally' produces optimal outcomes when generally followed, punishment needs no further act-level cost-benefit justification.
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    • 3.Therefore, consequentialism can justify punishment through rule-compliance rather than case-by-case instrumental calculation of independently identifiable goods.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Consequentialists like Mill held that justice is a name for certain indispensable social utilities, making desert itself a consequentially grounded value.
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    • 2.If retributive intuitions about desert are themselves explained and vindicated by their role in sustaining cooperative social order, the goods punishment tracks are not 'independently identifiable' from retributive considerations.
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    • 3.The claim falsely presupposes a clean separation between consequentialist and retributive justifications that indirect consequentialism deliberately collapses.
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    Justice & Punishment

    Related

    Consequentialism requires that actions (including institutional practices like p...Consequentialists like Mill held that justice is a name for certain indispensabl...If retributive intuitions about desert are themselves explained and vindicated b...If the rule 'punish offenders proportionally' produces optimal outcomes when gen...
    +3 moreShow less
    Rule consequentialists justify punishment by appeal to rules whose general accep...The claim falsely presupposes a clean separation between consequentialist and re...Therefore, consequentialism can justify punishment through rule-compliance rathe...

    Similar

    Any adequate justification of punishment must be basically consequenti...92%A purely consequentialist account of punishment is inadequate.86%A purely consequentialist account of punishment can lead to injustices...84%The justification of punishment requires a mixed or hybrid account tha...83%

    Source

    AI-extracted
    SEP: legal-punishment
    View source passageHide passage
    The question of whether, and how, legal punishment can be justified has long been a central concern of legal, moral, and political philosophy: what could justify a state in using the apparatus of the law to inflict intentionally burdensome treatment on its citizens? Radically different answers to this question are offered by consequentialist and by retributivist theorists — and by those who seek to incorporate consequentialist and retributivist considerations in ‘mixed’ theories of punishment. Meanwhile, abolitionist theorists argue that we should aim to replace legal punishment rather than to...

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit