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

    It is not the case that Sanction utilitarianism is internally inconsistent

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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Sanction utilitarianism avoids the infinite regress of sanctions by giving a direct utilitarian answer to when first-order sanctions should be applied — namely, a sanction should be applied if and only if doing so is optimal
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    • 2.But the general criterion of sanction utilitarianism is indirect — any action is wrong to which one ought to attach sanctions
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    • 3.Applying a direct utilitarian standard to the application of sanctions is inconsistent with the indirect utilitarian structure sanction utilitarianism uses to evaluate all other actions
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Sanction utilitarianism defines wrongness via what ought to be sanctioned, but 'ought' here must invoke a prior moral standard independent of sanctions.
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    • 2.If that prior standard is direct utility maximization, then sanctions are redundant; if it is something else, the theory is pluralist, not utilitarian.
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    • 3.Either horn of this dilemma exposes a foundational inconsistency: the theory cannot be both complete and purely sanction-based.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Bradley's regress objection in Ethical Studies shows that any system grounding obligation in external sanctions generates an infinite demand for justifying each sanctioning act.
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    • 2.Mill's proposed fix — applying direct utilitarianism only to sanctions — creates a two-tier system where the meta-level criterion contradicts the object-level criterion.
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    • 3.A genuinely unified moral theory, as Sidgwick argued in The Methods of Ethics, cannot apply structurally different decision procedures at different levels without collapsing into theoretical incoherence.
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