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    The aggregation problem in contractualism, as Parfit and ... — Carmelics
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    Challenges→Contractualism cannot permit driving.

    The aggregation problem in contractualism, as Parfit and Temkin have argued, does not straightforwardly forbid summing benefits across persons when a practice constitutes a single social scheme all parties enter.

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    1 reason for
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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Parties who voluntarily enter a cooperative scheme implicitly accept its aggregative logic as fair terms of social cooperation.
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    • 2.Distinguishing between single schemes and isolated transactions provides principled grounds for when interpersonal aggregation is permissible.
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    • 3.Contractualism requires only that terms be non-rejectable by rational agents, not that no one faces disadvantage within legitimate schemes.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Voluntary entry under constrained choices (limited alternatives) doesn't generate genuine consent to unfavorable aggregative terms.
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    • 2.The boundary between 'single scheme' and separate transactions is theoretically indeterminate, making the exception too permissive in practice.
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    • 3.Even within schemes, contractualism must protect each person's individual claims against unreasonable sacrifice for aggregate gains.
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    Key Terms

    Parfit, Derek(as a major philosopher cited on this topic)
    An influential 20th-century philosopher known for writing about ethics, personal identity, and problems with how we compare different people's well-being.
    Social scheme(in contractualism)
    A shared system of rules and practices that everyone in a society agrees to participate in together, like a legal system or educational system.
    Temkin, Larry(as a major philosopher cited on this topic)
    A contemporary philosopher who has written extensively about fairness and the problems with simply adding up benefits and harms across different people.
    aggregation problem(Deontological ethics; arises in discussions of the paradox of deontological constraints and responses to moral catastrophes.)
    The philosophical problem of whether harms (or benefits) to multiple persons can be meaningfully summed or combined when making moral comparisons and decisions.
    contractualism
    A moral theory presented as a genuine alternative to both consequentialism and Kantian ethics, one that coheres with distinctively non-utilitarian intuitions in certain key cases

    Connections

    2 topics

    Social Contract1 linkedConsequentialism1 linked

    Related

    Contractualism cannot permit driving.Contractualism requires only that terms be non-rejectable by rational agents, no...Distinguishing between single schemes and isolated transactions provides princip...Even within schemes, contractualism must protect each person's individual claims...
    +3 moreShow less
    Parties who voluntarily enter a cooperative scheme implicitly accept its aggrega...The boundary between 'single scheme' and separate transactions is theoretically ...Voluntary entry under constrained choices (limited alternatives) doesn't generat...

    Details

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