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    Sanction utilitarianism is preferable to act utilitarianism — Carmelics
    Home/Consequentialism
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    Sanction utilitarianism is preferable to act utilitarianism

    Consequentialism
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Sanction utilitarianism provides a more plausible account of the relation among different deontic categories
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    • 2.Sanction utilitarianism allows a distinction between duty and expediency
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    • 3.Under sanction utilitarianism, not all inexpedient acts are wrong — only those it is good or optimal to sanction
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Sanction utilitarianism makes wrongness depend on the existence of social practices of punishment, which are contingent and often unjust.
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    • 2.An act can be genuinely wrong even when no optimal system of sanctions exists or would sanction it, as Brandt's rule utilitarianism demonstrates.
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    • 3.Grounding moral wrongness in sanctionability collapses normative ethics into a form of social enforcement theory, losing action-guidance for novel moral situations.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.The distinction between duty and expediency in sanction utilitarianism reintroduces a non-consequentialist standard to determine which sanctions are 'optimal'.
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    • 2.If optimality of sanctions is itself judged by consequences, sanction utilitarianism regresses into act utilitarianism at the level of sanction-evaluation, as Smart argued.
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    Topics

    Consequentialism

    Connections

    2 topics

    Justice & Punishment2 linkedMoral Responsibility1 linked

    Related

    An act can be genuinely wrong even when no optimal system of sanctions exists or...Grounding moral wrongness in sanctionability collapses normative ethics into a f...If optimality of sanctions is itself judged by consequences, sanction utilitaria...Sanction utilitarianism allows a distinction between duty and expediency
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    Sanction utilitarianism makes wrongness depend on the existence of social practi...Sanction utilitarianism provides a more plausible account of the relation among ...The distinction between duty and expediency in sanction utilitarianism reintrodu...

    Similar

    Sanction utilitarianism is inconsistent with act utilitarianism.88%Sanction utilitarianism has disadvantages that act utilitarianism does...85%Sanction utilitarianism enjoys no real advantage over act utilitariani...85%Classic utilitarianism holds that an act is right if and only if it ma...83%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: mill-moral-political
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    Given Mill’s ambivalence between direct and indirect utilitarianism, it is natural to inquire whether one view is more plausible than the other. Some of Mill’s claims in Chapter V suggest a possible advantage that sanction utilitarianism might have. In articulating sanction utilitarianism, Mill claims that it allows him to distinguish duty and expediency and claim that not all inexpedient acts are wrong; inexpedient acts are only wrong when it is good or optimal to sanction them. This suggests t
    Extraction notes

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

    Details

    Under sanction utilitarianism, not all inexpedient acts are wrong — only those i...
    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit