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    Carmelics

    A reasoning platform. Break down any belief into clear reasons, explore both sides, and weigh the evidence honestly.

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Whether an action is wrong depends on whether it is optimal to apply sanctions to that action

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

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.An action can be morally wrong even when sanctions against it would produce worse outcomes than non-enforcement (e.g., private vices harming only the agent).
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    • 2.Mill himself distinguishes in On Liberty between actions that are merely imprudent self-regarding acts and actions that are genuinely immoral, indicating wrongness precedes sanctionability.
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    • 3.Collapsing wrongness into sanction-optimality confuses the criteria for moral assessment with the criteria for legal or social enforcement, a category error Mill's own harm principle resists.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.If wrongness is defined by optimal sanctioning, then in societies where enforcement is systematically corrupt or weak, previously wrong actions become permissible by institutional accident.
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    • 2.Ross's prima facie duties framework demonstrates that moral wrongness tracks agent-relative obligations (fidelity, reparation, gratitude) whose bindingness is independent of any third-party sanctioning calculus.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.An action is wrong if and only if it is optimal to sanction that action
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    • 2.Mill holds that whether sanctions ought to be applied to an action depends upon the utility or expediency of doing so
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