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
12.
It can be inferred from ███ ███████ ████ ███ ██████ █████ ██ ████ ██████ ██ █████ ████ █████ ███ ██ ███ █████████ █████████████████ ██ ███ ██████ █████████ ███ █████████ ██████████
Question Type
Stated
The author says a lot about the second rationale (retributivist), so it’ll be difficult to anticipate the correct answer. We’ll probably have to use process of elimination.
a
It is more ██████ ████████ ████ ███ █████ ██████████
There’s no support for the second rationale being “more widely accepted” than the first. Although the author does note that the second rationale can support intuitions against overly harsh punishments, this doesn’t imply anything about the level of acceptance of the retributive rationale. How many people accept it compared to the number that accept social-benefit rationale? We don’t know.
b
It does not ████ ███ ████ █████████ ██████████ ██ ███ █████ ██████████
Supported. The first rationale doesn’t allow for considerations of what’s appropriate, whereas the second rationale does. So the second rationale doesn’t have the “same” potential unfairness — if a punishment is too harsh, the second rationale can support an argument that it’s not just.
c
It justifies more █████ ██ ███████████ ████ ███ █████ ██████████
No support for “more kinds of punishments.” “Kinds” of punishments involves the different ways in which people are punished — jail, fine, sex-offender registry, execution etc. The passage doesn’t suggest that the second rationale justifies a greater number of different kinds of punishment than the first rationale.
d
It is used ████ ██ █████ █████ █████ ███ █████ █████████ ████████ ███ ███████████
Not supported. The second rationale can justify the intuition that certain punishments are overly harsh; but this doesn’t imply that the second rationale is used only in these cases. One can apply the second rationale to more moderate punishments or even those punishments that barely cause any harm to a criminal. The second rationale might be used to support punishments that don’t go against our intuitions.
e
It inherently allows ████ ███████ ██████████ ████ ███ █████ ██████████
Not supported, because the first rationale can allow for punishment that is equally lenient, as long as social benefit justifies lenient punishment. Although the first rationale allows for harsher punishment than the second (because the first rationale doesn’t consider proportionality), that doesn’t imply the first rationale can’t also allow equally lenient punishment as the first. In other words, the first rationale might have a wider range of allowable punishment. But within that range could be equally lenient punishments as the second rationale.
Difficulty
60% of people who answer get this correct
This is a difficult question.
It is slightly harder than the average question in this passage.
CURVE
Score of students with a 50% chance of getting this right
25%143
159
75%175
Analysis
Stated
Law
Single position
Answer Popularity
PopularityAvg. score
a
3%
159
b
60%
167
c
13%
160
d
8%
161
e
15%
165
Question history
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