Corrective Justice
Corrective Justice
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矫正正义
DOI：
10.1086/292145
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发表时间：
1980
期刊：
影响因子：
10.8
通讯作者：
Christopher Arnold
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Christopher Arnold
Elimination is sometimes illumination. We make one kind of progress in philosophy by demonstrating that some concepts are superfluous to an adequate theory and thus dispensable. We shed this kind of light on a concept by establishing that its point has become undermined by philosophical enquiry or by showing evidence that the concept really is obscure and is underpinned by unreliable ideas so that its work may be performed better by some less obscure concept. Logic provides numerous examples of the benefits of this kind of explication. The repudiation of singular terms and definite descriptions in favor of predicates is a famous example there.1 The advances we make in this way are noteworthy. Dim concepts are inefficient to communicate ideas. Their elimination can mean that we hold on to logical principles more easily, offer simpler models of reality, and check circularity in arguments. It is an ancient caution not to multiply concepts beyond necessity. Elimination of a concept counts as an analysis of it, for it does explain a concept to know that it is theoretically unnecessary and that the model of which it is a part is intelligible without it. Philosophy of law exhibits benefits of this kind of explication in the thesis that rights are redundant.2 That thesis stems from the insight that right-relations merely duplicate in their language existing dutyrelations. The language of duty is preferable. It serves to block circular arguments between right and duty and back again. It simplifies logic-at least deontic logic-and it strengthens a coercive model of law in the link between duty and sanction. Of course the value of any elimination is settled by how neatly it solves real problems and how it shows that some concepts are undermined. If, however, it sidesteps real problems then elimination is a misnomer for avoidance. In the theory of justice this kind of explication also functions as a method of analysis. There are two preliminary and formal matters in the
