Hard Vs Soft Paternalism

Submitted By greek52034
Words: 326
Pages: 2

Class Notes: 11/6/13

- philosophical approach: asks if boxing fits the logical requirements (meets the necessary conditions) for an activity to be designated a sport. These 3 requirements are: 1) activity has an identifiable goal/objective…2) rules exisit that make the achievement of the goal more difficult than would otherwise be the case…3) activity recquires physical skill and prowess - sociological approach: requires that we simply look to see if a sufficient number of people view the activity in question as a sport. (The sociological definition also looks for evidence of institutionalization and broadly-based cultural support) - paternalism: it involves some kind of limitation on the freedom or autonomy of some agent and it does so for a particular class of reasons. As with many other concepts used in normative debate determining the exact boundaries of the concept is a contested issue - hard vs soft paternalism: soft: the view that the only conditions under which state paternalism is justified is when it is necessary to determine whether the person being interfered with is acting voluntarily and knowledgably…hard: it may be permissible to stop a person from doing a task even if the condition is known - narrow vs borad paternalism: narrow: only concerned with the question of state coercion such as the legal use of cericion…broad: concerned with any paternalistic action: state, institutional (hospital policy), or individual - pure vs. impure paternalism: