ROSS ON DESERT AND PUNISHMENT

Abstract:  W. D. Ross thinks it is good, other things equal, that people get what they deserve. But he denies that "the principle of punishing the vicious, for the sake of doing so, is that on which the state should proceed in its bestowal of punishments." Ross offers two main arguments for this denial: what I call the "scope argument" and the "state's purpose argument." I argue that both fail. In doing so, I illuminate Ross's distinctive views about desert and the state.