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    Carmelics

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

    It is not the case that Consequentialist traditions from Bentham onward ground punishment's justification in deterrence and social utility, making rights-violation centrality a question-begging assumption favoring retributivism.

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

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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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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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 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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