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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 Rule consequentialists should ask 'What would happen if everybody were permitted to do that?' rather than 'What would happen if everybody did that?'

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

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Brad Hooker's canonical formulation of rule consequentialism uses internalization by the majority, not universal permission, as the relevant test case.
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    • 2.The 'permitted to do' standard conflates the legal-political question of what society should allow with the moral question of what rules agents should internalize.
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    • 3.This conflation causes rule consequentialism to collapse into a theory of legitimate governance rather than a theory of individual moral obligation.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.The 'permitted to do' formulation smuggles in a prior normative framework to determine what counts as permissible, making rule consequentialism circular.
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    • 2.If we need non-consequentialist criteria to fix the reference class of permissions, rule consequentialism loses its claim to be a self-standing moral theory.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.The 'what would everybody do' formulation yields implausible results (e.g., condemning childlessness as wrong)
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    • 2.The 'permitted to do' formulation avoids these counterexamples because enough people voluntarily choose to have children, so permitting childlessness does not threaten species survival
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