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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Consequentialism implies that punishment of the innocent is justified when its consequences are good on balance.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Consequentialism judges practices solely by their consequences.
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    • 2.Consequentialism denies that a person's innocence is morally significant in itself.
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Bentham's felicific calculus holds that moral weight derives entirely from pleasure and pain aggregates, not from the moral status of individuals.
      ?

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    • 2.If punishing one innocent person provably prevents greater suffering to many, the calculus yields a net positive outcome that Benthamite consequentialism must endorse.
      ?

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    • 3.No special deontological constraint on innocence exists within classical utilitarianism to override this aggregate calculation.
      ?

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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Smart's act-utilitarianism, as articulated in 'Utilitarianism: For and Against,' explicitly permits acts violating common moral intuitions when consequences favor them.
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    • 2.Smart acknowledges that punishing the innocent is a counterintuitive implication but treats this as evidence of intuition's unreliability, not of utilitarianism's failure.
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    • 3.Rule-utilitarian responses that prohibit such punishment must themselves be justified by consequences, making the prohibition contingent rather than absolute.
      ?

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