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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Sanction utilitarianism does not face the problems that a... — Carmelics
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    Home/Moral Responsibility
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    Sanction utilitarianism does not face the problems that act utilitarianism faces regarding the fourfold moral distinction.

    ConsequentialismMoral Responsibility
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Sanction utilitarianism offers a distinct account of each moral category: the forbidden, the permissible, the obligatory, and the supererogatory.
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    • 2.Act utilitarianism collapses these distinctions, but sanction utilitarianism preserves them.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Sanction utilitarianism merely relocates the act-utilitarian calculus to the level of rules about punishment, preserving the same collapse of distinctions.
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    • 2.An act is obligatory under sanction utilitarianism if and only if failing to perform it warrants punishment, leaving no principled space for the supererogatory distinct from the merely non-punishable.
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    • 3.This replication of the fourfold problem at the sanction level was identified by Urmson (1958) as endemic to any consequentialist framework that grounds moral categories in outcomes.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Sanction utilitarianism's account of the permissible and the supererogatory depends on contingent facts about which sanctions it is utility-maximizing to enforce.
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    • 2.If social utility shifts, acts once classified as supererogatory become obligatory or forbidden, making the fourfold distinction unstable rather than genuinely preserved.
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    • 3.Scheffler's critique of agent-centered prerogatives shows that any system tying moral categories to externally justified sanctions cannot generate the agent-relative distinctions the fourfold scheme requires.
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    Moral ResponsibilityConsequentialism

    Related

    Act utilitarianism collapses these distinctions, but sanction utilitarianism pre...An act is obligatory under sanction utilitarianism if and only if failing to per...If social utility shifts, acts once classified as supererogatory become obligato...Sanction utilitarianism merely relocates the act-utilitarian calculus to the lev...
    +4 moreShow less
    Sanction utilitarianism offers a distinct account of each moral category: the fo...Sanction utilitarianism's account of the permissible and the supererogatory depe...Scheffler's critique of agent-centered prerogatives shows that any system tying ...This replication of the fourfold problem at the sanction level was identified by...

    Similar

    Sanction utilitarianism has disadvantages that act utilitarianism does...86%Negative utilitarianism holds that an act is morally wrong if and only...84%Sanction utilitarianism is inconsistent with act utilitarianism.83%Act utilitarianism cannot adequately account for the moral distinction...81%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: mill-moral-political
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    The act utilitarian seems unable to account for this fourfold distinction. It implies that I do wrong every time I fail to perform the optimal act, even when these suboptimal acts are very good. Because it makes the optimal obligatory and the suboptimal wrong, it appears to expand the domain of the forbidden, collapse the distinction between the permissible and the obligatory, and make no room for the supererogatory. If the optimal is already one’s duty, there appears to be no room for the super
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit