The concept of appropriateness (absent in social-benefit rationale) is what accounts for the intuition of proportionality in punishment. It's not about beneficial punishment. It's about just punishment.
Critique of and Alternate Solution ·Intuition can be justified with social-benefit rationale
The retributivist notions of appropriateness, proportionality, and justice can be reframed as balancing benefit to society against cost to the individual.
Actual Answer / Main Point ·The retributivist intuitions are grounded in social-benefit rationale
Passage Style
Single position
10.
Based on the passage, the ████████████ ███████ ██ ███ ██████ █████████ ███ █████████ █████████ ███████████████ ████████ ██ ███ ████████ ████████ ██ ████ ███████████
Question Type
Author’s attitude
Implied
To understand the meaning of this phrase, it’s important to understand what the “retributivist rationale” is. This is described in P2: “The second rationale is that a punishment is justified by the severity of the crime, independent of any benefit to society.” In P4, the author makes the point that if we view the retributivist rationale in terms of balancing societal benefit against harm to the criminal, then the “retributive” nature disappears. In other words, the idea that punishment is justified by severity of the crime, without any regard to benefit to society, is no longer a principle underlying the level of punishment.
a
equating social benefit ████ ████ ██ █████████
Anti-supported, because the retribution rationale is independent of any benefit to society, at least before the author makes the point that its grounded in the social-benefit rationale. In addition, (A) isn’t supported by the author’s point at the end, because the author never suggests that “social benefit” and “harm to criminals” is equal. Rather, we balance benefit to society against harm to the criminal.
14%
b
regarding punishment as █████████ ██ ███ ████████ ██ ███ █████
This captures the meaning of “retributive nature” as expressed by this line.
78%
c
support for sentences ████████████████ ██ ███ ██████ ████ ██████
Anti-supported, because the retributive rationale actually allows for proportionality between punishments and crimes.
3%
d
belief that any ██████████ ████ ████████ ███████ ██ ████
Anti-supported, because this actually describes the social-benefit rationale, not the retributivist rationale.
4%
e
favoring harsher sentences ████ ████ ███████ ████
The retributivist rationale doesn’t inherently favor harsher sentences over more lenient ones; what matters is proportionality to the crime.
1%
Difficulty
78% of people who answer get this correct
This is a moderately difficult question.
It is somewhat easier than other questions in this passage.
CURVE
Score of students with a 50% chance of getting this right
25%137
149
75%161
Analysis
Author’s attitude
Author’s attitude
Stems that ask us to infer how the author feels about a certain viewpoint or claim.
Stems asking us to infer an idea implied by the claims in the passage (as opposed to identifying an idea that appears explicitly). Similar to most strongly supported questions in LR.
