When policymakers craft rules for use by the general public, they must take into account the ways in which their rules are likely to be misapplied. Should contractualists and rule consequentialists do the same when they search for rules whose general acceptance would be non-rejectable or ideal? I argue that these theorists face a dilemma. If they ignore the possibility of misapplication, they end up with an unrealistic view that rejects rules designed to protect us from others’ mistakes. On the other hand, if they take misapplication into account, they end up rejecting rules that appeal to what really matters morally in favor of easier-to-apply proxies for these rules. This leaves them unable to say why certain wrong acts are wrong, which in turn may lead them to mistaken verdicts about moral worth and wronging. I show how this misapplication dilemma applies to standard contractualist and rule consequentialist theories, but also suggest how it might generalize to other two-level theories, including those designed to avoid the ideal world objection.

中文翻译：

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误用困境

当政策制定者制定供公众使用的规则时，他们必须考虑到他们的规则可能被误用的方式。当契约论者和规则后果论者寻找普遍接受的规则是不可拒绝的或理想的时，他们是否应该这样做？我认为这些理论家面临着两难境地。如果他们忽视误用的可能性，他们最终会得出一种不切实际的观点，拒绝旨在保护我们免受他人错误影响的规则。另一方面，如果他们考虑到误用，他们最终会拒绝那些在道德上真正重要的规则，而倾向于更容易应用这些规则的代理。这使得他们无法说出为什么某些错误行为是错误的，这反过来可能导致他们对道德价值和错误做出错误的判断。我展示了这种误用困境如何适用于标准契约主义和规则结果主义理论，但也提出了如何将其推广到其他两层理论，包括那些旨在避免理想世界反对的理论。