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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that The only plausible justification for the costs of criminal punishment is that it has large instrumental benefits in terms of crime prevention.

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

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Retributive desert is itself a freestanding moral reason for punishment, not merely an intuition requiring instrumental backing.
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    • 2.Kant, Moore, and Husak himself elsewhere argue that punishing the guilty is intrinsically required by respect for persons as rational agents.
      ?

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    • 3.If desert grounds an obligation rather than merely a permission to punish, instrumental benefits become sufficient but not necessary for justification.
      ?

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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Expressive and communicative theories justify punishment as moral address to the offender, independent of deterrent consequences.
      ?

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    • 2.Duff's Penance account and Feinberg's expressivism show punishment can be justified by its meaning rather than its causal effects on crime rates.
      ?

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    • 3.A justification grounded in legitimate censure and moral communication does not collapse into instrumentalism even when crime prevention benefits are marginal.
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Criminal punishment imposes significant costs.
      ?

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    • 2.It is implausible that these costs can be justified simply by the importance of punishing wrongdoers as they deserve to be punished.
      ?

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    Strongest counterpoint
    Explore the most compelling reason on the other side.