Because desert is determined by rational agency and happiness by natural causation, their proportionality would require a pre-established harmony that cannot be derived from practical reason alone and must be merely postulated, not demonstrated.

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1 reason against

Reasons For

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Reason for

1.Rational agency operates through free choice while happiness follows causal laws; these operate in fundamentally different domains requiring external coordination.
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2.Practical reason can only establish what agents ought to do, not what actually happens in nature; bridging these requires metaphysical positing.
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3.The correlation between moral desert and actual happiness shows no logical necessity, only contingent alignment requiring explanation beyond reason.
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Reasons Against

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Reason against

1.Rational agency may itself be part of natural causation rather than separate from it, eliminating the claimed domain distinction requiring harmony.
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2.The fact that practical reason cannot derive something doesn't establish that it must be postulated; it may simply be unknown or inaccessible to us.
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3.Desert and happiness may not require proportionality at all; the claim presupposes a moral premise rather than deriving it from the logical structure.
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Key Terms

Natural causation(in metaphysics and philosophy of nature): Events that happen because of physical laws and natural processes (like gravity or chemistry) rather than because of someone's deliberate choices.
Postulated(in epistemology and logic): Assumed to be true or claimed without proof, usually as a starting point for further reasoning.
Proportionality(One of the standard conditions for Jus Ad Bellum): The requirement that the ends to be secured by going to war would warrant the costs and harms of waging it.
demonstrated(Malebranche's epistemological framework for establishing theological and metaphysical maxims): Proven with necessity; in Malebranche's usage, only necessary truths qualify as demonstrable
desert(Cited as a backward-looking basis for justice that utilitarianism cannot straightforwardly accommodate.): What a person merits or is owed based on their past actions or conduct.
practical reason(Kantian moral philosophy): The rational faculty by which agents determine what is morally valuable and impose the moral law upon themselves.
pre-established harmony(Leibniz's early career writings; introduced to resolve the tension between the independence of substances and the requirement that each represent the whole universe): A doctrine introduced on truth-theoretical grounds, holding that God, in his goodness and preference for a maximally harmonious world, has established that each substance truly represents all other substances in the universe, even though finite substances exist independently of one another.
rational agency(Kantian account of autonomy): A mode of operation that can only function by seeking to be the first cause of its actions.

Connections

2 topics

Virtue Ethics1 linked Justice & Punishment1 linked

Desert and happiness may not require proportionality at all; the claim presuppos...Happiness is directly proportioned to merit.

Details

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