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
13.
As expressed in the passage, ███ ████████ ████████ ██████ ████ █████ █████████ ███ █████ ████████ ██ ████ ██████████ █████████ ██
Question Type
Author’s perspective
Implied
The author comments on very harsh penalties for minor offenses at the beginning of P3: “One problem with the social-benefit rationale is that it is possible that very harsh penalties even for minor offenses may have great benefit to society.” The author characterizes these punishments as a “problem” — there’s something that intuitively leads us to think these punishments are not just.
a
reluctant approval of ███ ██████████ ████ █████ ███████ █████
Anti-supported; the author suggests that there’s something intuitively unjust about these punishments.
b
mild skepticism that ████ ██████████ ███████ ███████
Not supported, because although the author does suggest in the last paragraph that these overly harsh punishments might cause more harm to the criminal than they benefit society, this doesn’t imply the author thinks they don’t benefit society. They do, just not enough to outweigh the harm to the criminal.
Anti-supported; the author suggests that there’s something intuitively unjust about these punishments.
d
scholarly neutrality on ███████ ████ ███ █████████
Anti-supported; the author suggests that there’s something intuitively unjust about these punishments.
e
implicit disapproval of █████ █████ █████████
Supported; the author suggests that there’s something intuitively unjust about these punishments.
Difficulty
59% 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%139
159
75%178
Analysis
Author’s perspective
Implied
Law
Single position
Answer Popularity
PopularityAvg. score
a
8%
159
b
10%
161
c
1%
166
d
22%
165
e
59%
167
Question history
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