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Notes
For an example of the ‘thickest’ possible account of events, see W. V. O. Quine, Word and Object, (Cambridge MASS: MIT Press, 1960), 131. For a ‘thinner’ view, see J. Kim, ‘Causation, Nomic Substitution, and the Concept of an Event’ (1973) 70 The Journal of Philosophy 217.
For a defence of non-comparativism about harm, see Seana Shiffrin, ‘Wrongful Life, Procreative Responsibility, and the Significance of Harm’, (1999) 5 Legal Theory 117–148 and ‘Harm and Its Moral Significance’, (2012) 18 Legal Theory 1–42.
See Stephen Perry, ‘Harm, History and Counterfactuals’, (2003) 40 San Diego Law Review 1283 and David Velleman ‘Persons in Prospect’, (2008) 36 Philosophy and Public Affairs 221.
See Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons, (Oxford: OUP, 1984), 69–70.
For a development of the complex counterfactual view, see Victor Tadros, What Might Have Been, (forthcoming).
Matthew Hanser, ‘The Metaphysics of Harm’, LXXVII, No. 2 (September 2008) Philosophy and Phenomenological Research at p. 422.
Ibid.
See Ibid. p. 422 and 443–444.
Ibid. p. 444.
Actually, as I mentioned, on Hanser’s account the magnitude of harm is determined by both event-based and state-based factors. But this complication is irrelevant to the criticism: the account still implausibly implies that some factors (the state-based ones), which help determine the magnitude of harm, have nothing to do with the badness of harm.
J. J. Thomson, ‘More on the Metaphysics of Harm’, LXXXII, No. 2 (March 2011) Philosophy and Phenomenological Research at p. 457.
Matthew Hanser, ‘Yet more on the Metaphysics of Harm’, LXXXII, No. 2 (March 2011) Philosophy and Phenomenological Research at p. 467.
Ibid. p. 466.
See Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere, (Oxford University Press, 1986), 156–62.
See ‘The Metaphysics of Harm’ at pp. 437–440 and ‘Yet more on the Metaphysics of Harm’ at pp. 463–444.
For a detailed defence of this view, see Jeff McMahan, The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), ch. 2.
Depending on one’s view of personal identity, one may think that a person ceases to exist when she falls into a coma. This is immaterial: the argument does not require the assumption that a person persists through a coma. There is still an individual who can be the subject of a harm, even if this individual is not properly described as a person.
See Judith Thomson, ‘More on the Metaphysics of Harm’ 82, No. 2 Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 436 and Victor Tadros ‘What Might Have Been’. I do not believe that Thomson’s view overcomes the problem of pre-emption, but I have no space to defend that claim here.
See ‘Yet more on the Metaphysics of Harm’ at p. 468.
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Slavny, A. How Eventful is the Event-Based Theory of Harm?. J Value Inquiry 48, 559–571 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-014-9433-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-014-9433-1