No reason to doubt desert: reply to Pummer

Noonan, Harold W.

Abstract

Pummer argues against the thesis: Desert. When people culpably do very wrong or bad acts, they deserve punishment in the following sense: at least other things being equal, they ought to be made worse off, simply in virtue of the fact that they culpably did wrong–even if they have repented, are now virtuous, and punishing them would benefit no one. This has strong intuitive appeal and is arguably central to many people’s views of punishment. If Pummer’s arguments succeed, they matter. He argues that what, in certain cases, defenders of Desert must say is the morally right allocation of punishment is intuitively morally unacceptable. He explains that it is only Desert in conjunction with other theses which entails this. But he argues that these are acceptable. I reject this. One additional thesis is Pummer’s ‘Numbers Matter’. This can be rejected by defenders of Desert. Pummer’s case against Desert fails.

Citation

Noonan, H. W. (2025). No reason to doubt desert: reply to Pummer. Inquiry, https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2025.2465355

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 6, 2025
• Online Publication Date: Feb 17, 2025
• Publication Date: Feb 17, 2025
• Deposit Date: Feb 12, 2025
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 12, 2025
• Journal: Inquiry
• Print ISSN: 0020-174X
• Electronic ISSN: 1502-3923
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2025.2465355
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/45310217
• Publisher URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0020174X.2025.2465355