What is harm?
What is harm to you?
I view harm as an unpleasant experience of any kind and something only conscious beings can have.I don't think the environment can be harmed or anything non-sentient.
I think harm, is bad by definition because a good harm seems to be an oxymoron. I would say the pain form a life saving surgery is bad or the pain you may endure trying to achieve a goal and we often try and minimise these kind of harms.
I can't think of a solution to harm that does not sacrifice someone or some groups interests.
I view harm as an unpleasant experience of any kind and something only conscious beings can have.I don't think the environment can be harmed or anything non-sentient.
I think harm, is bad by definition because a good harm seems to be an oxymoron. I would say the pain form a life saving surgery is bad or the pain you may endure trying to achieve a goal and we often try and minimise these kind of harms.
I can't think of a solution to harm that does not sacrifice someone or some groups interests.
Comments (16)
So if I cure somebody of leprosy, that brings back pain (an unpleasant experience) into their hands say, and I've done them harm in doing so. Unpleasant experience wouildn't exist if it didn't have a benefit.
So I'd say that harm is a decrease in value, and value is not necessarily something only conscious beings can have. Can a tree be harmed? It doesn't particularly have experiences that can be categorized as pleasant or not, and it doesn't seem to hold 'value', and yet I can arguably harm one. So maybe my definition needs work as well.
I can do a lot of harm while causing pleasant experience. In fact lots of what are harmful on the long term started as pleasant on the short term.
This seems to be just the contrast pole of the Is good indefinable thread.
People use the claim "It isn't harming anyone" to justify a behaviour or stance.
I think you can interfere with a trees teleology. The tree seems to have a function it is fulfilling. But that might not amount to harm.
An ecologist maybe harmed by witnessing the destruction of a habitat. Anyone could be harmed by distress at some event or conduct.
You mean like S-M? It hurts so good? Pleasure through pain? Harm me, baby?
If you are getting a thrill from being hit then that would turn the pain into a pleasure.
What about deserved harm? If a person deserves to come to harm - by, say, behaving immorally - then it is good if that person comes to harm, not bad. So harm is not bad by definition. It is often bad, but it is bad when it is not deserved, but good when it is.
Sweeping definitions often lead to problems. This formulation leads to defining all sorts of good things -- dentistry, running a marathon, dieting to lose excess weight, surgery ... -- as bad, which they clearly are not.
(At least some species of) trees can sense when they are being attacked, execute countermeasures, and warn other trees. Some trees can also tolerate certain insects that would otherwise be a danger, like ants. Tree responses are not fast or dramatic, but they help the tree survive.
There are, obviously, good things and bad things. They might not be as obviously different as red round balls and blue cubes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_marathon_fatalities
I am saying the pain involved is unwelcome and not the whole event.
My personal preference is for minimum pain.
I will concede your point to an extent to say that a prohibition on pain would rule out a lot of activities but personally as an antinatalist I would bite the bullet because I want to eradicate pain.
But if you take the alternate stance that not all pain is bad then who decides how much pain is acceptable and why?
The person experiencing the pain decides. We don't have a way of measuring pain in an objective way. I have quite a bit of pain from arthritis in various joints. I find it manageable, if unpleasant. Somebody else might find the same level of pain intolerable. Would I opt for less pain? Of course. Arthritic pain is a damned nuisance. On the other hand, the new and different pain of a still-small cancer is helpful.
Some persons excepted, most people prefer to minimize pain whether they are avid natalists or antinatlists.
True enough, a very small percentage of people running marathons drop dead during the 26 mile course. Why so few? Probably (just guessing) because runners have to train up to 26 miles. They don't hop out of their rocking chair and run their first marathon. And, remarkably, most runners don't seem to suffer from it, either.
Pain is also a biological alert. It helps one respond to getting too hot or too cold, for instance. Antinatalists and natalists alike prefer to avoid having their feet or hands become severely frostbit.
We cannot measure pain directly but we can have an objective list of things of what things predictably cause pain and at what likely level in humans.
We do decide on behalf of others how much pain they should experience mental and physical
by introducing pain reduction measures or forcing people to do things. We can intervene in self harm cases and prosecute cases of excessive S&M. Remember the voluntary cannibal victim in Germany (Bernd Brandes)?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_Meiwes
They are subjectively good based on preferences unless you believe in objective goods?
But is it bad or good?
Can we go beyond the basic claim that someone is suffering.
And how do we measure suffering is it simply self report and can self report be called into question?
I am not suggesting we are skeptical of self report but I also think it has problems of verification and can amount to "I don't like this" which could be applied to any experience we have and could be true in as much as people can perceive anything as unpleasant. I don't like the sounds of birds tweeting loudly on a summer day because I have sensitive hearing.