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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
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    Consequentialist traditions from Bentham onward ground pu... — Carmelics
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    Challenges→The more tenuous the connection to a rights violation, and the less culpable the mental state, the more controversial punishment for an act or omission becomes.

    Consequentialist traditions from Bentham onward ground punishment's justification in deterrence and social utility, making rights-violation centrality a question-begging assumption favoring retributivism.

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    Reasons For

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    Reason for
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    • 1.Retributivists assume rights-violations demand punishment independent of outcomes, but this lacks empirical justification for why desert matters morally.
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    • 2.Consequentialism's focus on reducing future harm through deterrence directly addresses punishment's purpose without circular reasoning about intrinsic desert.
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    • 3.If punishment only reduces crime when people believe in deterrence, then utility-maximization provides a coherent rationale retributivism cannot match.
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    Reasons Against

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    Reason against
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    • 1.Consequentialism punishes innocents if it maximizes utility, violating core moral intuitions that retributivism preserves through desert-based limits.
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    • 2.Deterrence assumes rational actors, but empirical evidence shows many crimes occur despite known severe punishments, undermining consequentialism's core mechanism.
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    • 3.Retributivism's 'rights-violation centrality' is no more question-begging than consequentialism's undefended assumption that maximizing utility is the ultimate moral aim.
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    Key Terms

    Deterrence(as used in criminal justice)
    Discouraging someone from doing something (usually a crime) by threatening punishment or making them afraid of the consequences.
    Jeremy Bentham(as referenced for his theory of punishment)
    An 18th-century British philosopher who argued that the right action is whatever brings the most happiness to the most people, and that punishment should be used to deter crime.
    Question-begging assumption(as used in logic and argumentation)
    When someone assumes their conclusion is already true while trying to prove it, which is a circular and unfair argument.
    Retributivism(as used in ethics and justice philosophy)
    A theory of punishment that says people deserve to be punished in proportion to the harm they caused—the worse the crime, the harsher the punishment should be.
    Rights-violation centrality(in the context of punishment philosophy)
    The idea that the core reason punishment is justified is because someone has violated another person's rights, not because of other benefits like deterrence.
    Social utility(the refined form of self-interest)
    The usefulness or benefit that an action brings to society as a whole, rather than just to one person.
    consequentialist(Shared position of Russell and Moore)
    One who believes that the rightness or otherwise of an act is in some way dependent on consequences.

    Connections

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    Justice & Punishment1 linked

    Related

    Consequentialism punishes innocents if it maximizes utility, violating core mora...Consequentialism's focus on reducing future harm through deterrence directly add...Deterrence assumes rational actors, but empirical evidence shows many crimes occ...If punishment only reduces crime when people believe in deterrence, then utility...

    Details

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    Perspectives
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    Edits
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    +3 moreShow less
    Retributivism's 'rights-violation centrality' is no more question-begging than c...Retributivists assume rights-violations demand punishment independent of outcome...The more tenuous the connection to a rights violation, and the less culpable the...