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
11.
The author states that our █████████ ██ ███ █████████ ██ ██ ██████ █████ ██████████ ███ ██ █████ ██ █████ ███ ██ ███ █████████ ████████
Question Type
Meaning in context (of word, phrase, or idea)
Structure
The author tells us what this intuition is based on at the beginning of P4: “it can be argued that our intuition of the injustice of an overly harsh punishment is based on our sense that such a punishment is more harmful to the criminal than beneficial to society.”
a
Such punishment brings ██ ███████ ██ ███████ ██ ██████
Unsupported, too strong. The author states that overly harsh punishment is more harmful to the criminal than beneficial to society; this doesn’t imply that the punishment brings “no” benefit to society.
b
Such punishment is ███████████ ███████ ██ ███ █████████
The mere possibility of harm to the criminal isn’t why we think these punishments are unjust. It’s the fact that the harm to the criminal outweighs the benefit to society.
c
Such punishment benefits ███████ ████ ████ ██ █████ ███ █████████
Supported.
d
Such punishment harms ███ ████████ ████ ████ ██ ████████ ████████
Anti-supported; the issue is that overly harsh punishment harms the criminal more than it benefits society.
Not supported; the issue is that overly harsh punishment harms the criminal more than it benefits society. Attempts to “reconcile” benefit with harm are not why we view overly harsh punishment as intuitively unjust.
Difficulty
84% of people who answer get this correct
This is a moderately difficult question.
It is similar in difficulty to other questions in this passage.
CURVE
Score of students with a 50% chance of getting this right
25%137
147
75%158
Analysis
Meaning in context (of word, phrase, or idea)
Structure
Law
Single position
Answer Popularity
PopularityAvg. score
a
3%
156
b
6%
158
c
84%
167
d
3%
158
e
4%
162
Question history
You don't have any history with this question.. yet!
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