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    When we cannot avoid placing a severe burden on at least ... — Carmelics
    Home/Justice & Punishment
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    When we cannot avoid placing a severe burden on at least one person, contractualism's ideal of choosing a scenario acceptable to each person from their personal point of view is not practical.

    Social Contract
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    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Scanlon's contractualism requires principles no one could reasonably reject, but 'reasonable rejection' presupposes a threshold of bearability that collapses under guaranteed severe harm.
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    • 2.When all options impose severe burdens, no complainant can be told their rejection is 'unreasonable,' since each faces what Scanlon calls a legitimately weighty individual objection.
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    • 3.A contractualist procedure that cannot adjudicate between universally burden-imposing options produces indeterminacy, not guidance, exposing a structural limitation in the framework's action-guiding capacity.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Rawls's original position generates determinate principles because contractors can rank outcomes behind a veil of ignorance, but Scanlonian contractualism's person-relative standpoint forecloses this aggregative move.
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    • 2.Without recourse to aggregation or impartial ranking, contractualism lacks the theoretical resources to resolve tragic dilemmas where every option leaves some person with an undefeated reasonable complaint.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Contractualism's ideal is to choose a scenario acceptable to each person from their personal point of view.
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    • 2.In some scenarios, every available option places a severe burden on at least one person.
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    • 3.When every option involves severe burden, no option can be acceptable to all affected persons from their personal point of view.
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    Topics

    Justice & PunishmentSocial Contract

    Key Terms

    Acceptable to each person(as the ideal contractualism aims for)
    Something that everyone involved could reasonably agree to or at least not strongly object to, because it treats them fairly.
    Personal point of view(as a criterion for acceptable scenarios in contractualism)
    How a situation looks and feels from one individual person's own perspective, considering their own interests and what matters to them.
    Severe burden(as the constraint that makes contractualism's ideal difficult to achieve)
    A serious hardship or heavy cost that significantly harms or negatively impacts someone.
    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

    Consequentialism2 linkedMoral Responsibility1 linked

    Related

    A contractualist procedure that cannot adjudicate between universally burden-imp...Contractualism's ideal is to choose a scenario acceptable to each person from th...

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: contractualism
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    A utilitarian might conclude that, while this ideal of choosing a scenario that is acceptable to each person from his or her personal point of view is extremely appealing, it is not always attainable. In particular, this ideal is not practical when we cannot avoid placing a severe burden on at least one person. Contractualism focuses each person’s mind on the burdens imposed on himself or herself, and on other individuals—and invites us to withdraw our burdens if we see other individuals sufferi
    Extraction notes

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

    Details

    In some scenarios, every available option places a severe burden on at least one...
    Rawls's original position generates determinate principles because contractors c...
    +4 moreShow less
    Scanlon's contractualism requires principles no one could reasonably reject, but...When all options impose severe burdens, no complainant can be told their rejecti...When every option involves severe burden, no option can be acceptable to all aff...Without recourse to aggregation or impartial ranking, contractualism lacks the t...

    Similar

    In some scenarios, every available option places a severe burden on at...79%Under contractualism, a principle is impermissible if any individual h...79%When every option involves severe burden, no option can be acceptable ...78%Proponents of individualist formulations of contractualism can reject ...76%
    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit