Norcross on the Definition of Harm

Transcription

1 Norcross on the Definition of Harm 1. Introduction: Typically, it is understood that: Harm = Making someone worse off but worse off than what? Clearly NOT worse off than one was before. Imagine a case: Doctor A terminally ill patient s suffering is steadily increasing. His doctor can administer various pain-killers, but unfortunately they will only SLOW the suffering s rate of increase. She administers the drugs, with the effect that the patient s pain increases, but more slowly than it otherwise would have. On the above proposal, the doctor has harmed her patient. This is clearly absurd. Intuitively, we would say that she has actually benefitted her patient. (And the same would go for all kinds of more mundane cases like amputating a leg, or even just making a child eat her vegetables.) So, by harm we mean making someone worse off than they otherwise would have been. (The comparison is not across TIMES, but across POSSIBILITIES.) This initially makes sense. I hack off your arm. I ve made you worse off than you otherwise would have been. And it makes sense to say I ve harmed you. But, in a previous lecture, we objected to this definition of harm with a case like the following: Tonya Tonya is a figure-skater, and her rival is Nancy. Tonya takes a baseball bat to Nancy s knee and cripples her. She goes on to win the skating championship. Nancy goes to the hospital, where they discover and remove a tumor. Had the tumor not been discovered so early, cancer would have quickly spread and become inoperable. Nancy would have died a painful death. It seems that Tonya has BENEFITTED Nancy rather than harmed her. Norcross is actually fine with this: Tonya has harmed Nancy in the short term, but benefitted her in the long term. Tonya has harmed Nancy s knee, but benefitted her overall. We re only hesitant to admit this because we re smuggling in beliefs about what Tonya KNOWS and what her INTENTIONS are. For instance, imagine a case where Tonya knows about Nancy s tumor, but also knows that the only way to get Nancy to the doctor is to break her knee. She does so, despite the fact that she will go to jail and be barred from skating ever again. In this case, we have no problem accepting that Tonya has benefitted Nancy, and we might even call her a hero. [Ah, so intentions might matter, morally. We ll discuss in unit three!]

2 2. Two Problematic Kinds of Cases: Yet, Norcross still rejects our proposed definition of harm in light of the following two kinds of cases: Overdetermination Abe and Bea both simultaneously shoot Chad in the heart. Has Abe harmed Chad? Or has Bea? It seems that NEITHER have made him worse off than he otherwise would have been! Preemption Abe slips poison into Chad s drink. It will kill Chad in one minute. But, 30 seconds later, Bea walks in and shoots Chad in the heart. Again, it seems as if neither has harmed Chad. [Note that overdetermination and preemption cases CAN be told in such a way that one of the two HAS harmed me. For instance, imagine that in Preemption the only reason Bea shoots me is to put me out of my misery quickly, because dying of the poison would be very painful. In that case, Abe HAS made me worse off than I otherwise would have been (since Bea would not have shot me if Abe hadn t poisoned me). So Abe HAS made me worse off than I otherwise would have been. But, ignore this variant.] Solution? As Derek Parfit points out, the COLLECTION of Abe + Bea HAS harmed Chad. Collectively, they harm Chad. And for this reason, they both act wrongly. [Oh! Collective harms We ll return to this topic too.] Problem: But, I also would not have died had Abe + Bea + Obama acted differently. So, now Obama has harmed me!? Solution? We ll need to specify that the group which has harmed me is the SMALLEST possible group which, had they done something else, I would have not been made worse off. In the original cases, it s Abe+Bea. (And in the variant, it s just Abe.) Problem: But, then, consider another variant: Preemption at the Coke Machine Abe has just poisoned me. Before the poison sets in, I go outside to the Coke machine (I have this weird taste in my mouth for some reason!). Bea is hanging out by the Coke machine waiting to shoot someone. She shoots me as I walk up. Imagine further that, had I not walked up just then, Bea would have gotten bored and gone home a moment later.

3 Note that, in this case, it is ALSO true that Bea would not have shot me if Abe hadn t poisoned me. So, she does NOT get included in the smallest group. Apparently, ONLY Abe has harmed me in this scenario (i.e., if Abe hadn t poisoned me, I would not have been harmed at all). But, that is absurd! Or consider an even WORSE case: Abe s Joke Abe tells Chad a hilarious joke that makes him hoarse from laughter. Chad goes out to the Coke machine for a drink. He takes a sip. Unfortunately, some poison fell into it at the factory. Just as in the previous case, Bea is lurking by the machine waiting for a victim. She shoots Chad and he dies. Has Bea made Chad worse off than he otherwise would have been? No. Is she a member of the smallest GROUP which is such that, had that group acted otherwise, Chad would not have died? No. The smallest such group is just Abe: Abe told a joke. And, had he not done so, Chad would not have died. So, apparently Abe HAS harmed Chad and Bea has NOT harmed Chad. WTF. 1 1 Chad s brainstorm: Is that right? There s something fishy going on with causation here. Imagine that, in overdetermination, Abe and Bea are identical twins, the offspring of a sperm donor, Dave. Abe and Bea are not the smallest group which is such that, had they done otherwise, Chad would not have died. Rather, DAVE is! For, had he single-handedly not donated sperm, Chad would not have died. Something similarly fishy is going on in Norcross s Abe s Joke case, I think. Abe s joke doesn t CAUSE the Coke drinking. It s just a causal antecedent, just as Dave s sperm donation didn t CAUSE the murder, but was merely a causal antecedent. Consider 2 cases: (1) Joker pulls trigger, gun fires, bullet flies, bullet pierces Batman. (2) Abe tells joke, Norcross leaves room, goes to machine, selects Coke, drinks poison. The causal path from Joker s action to Batman s death is straightforward, but the causal path from Abe s action to Norcross s death is not (sometimes, this sort of chain is called deviant ). The path s from Dave s donation to Chad s death is also a deviant causal chain. But, what MAKES a causal chain deviant? Furthermore, why select Abe s joke-telling as the single event which is such that, had it not occurred, Norcross would not have died? After all, Norcross s act of driving to Abe s house earlier that evening, or his signing up for that course where he met Abe in college, or his going out for Coke rather than to the kitchen sink for water, etc., would all also fit the bill. What makes us uncomfortable with the verdict that Abe s joke killed Norcross, I think, is that this event is not essentially (or, maybe, nomologically) TIED to the effect of being made worse off. There is no law of nature which necessitates that a joke causes poisoning, or a bullet to the heart. But drinking poison or being shot ARE nomologically tied to those outcomes. And Bea s act of pulling the trigger is at least, given the laws of our world nomologically tied to the event of Norcross s being shot. Is any of this relevant???

4 Intentions to the Rescue? It seems to matter what the person KNOWS or BELIEVES. Imagine: Bea, the Anti-Terrorist Sniper Bea is actually a heroic sharpshooter about to save a bunch of hostages from terrorists. She discovers that her aim is off and needs to practice. She sees me in her sights at the Coke machine and detects poison in my system and knows I am certain to die within seconds. She snipes me off as practice, to increase the chances that she ll be able to save the hostages (and to put me out of my misery). Norcross claims that Bea has not harmed me, and has actually acted rightly. Do you agree? [Here, Norcross draws a distinction between OBJECTIVELY harming someone and SUBJECTIVELY harming them and therefore acting objectively wrongly vs. subjectively wrongly. Though Bea does not objectively harm her victim in any of the cases, in all but the anti-terrorist variant, she BELIEVES that she is harming her victim. So, she is SUBJECTIVELY harming her victim.] 3. Which Counterfactual Scenario?: We have said that action A harms you if performance of A leaves you worse than you otherwise would have been, had A not been performed But, how exactly are we to imagine A as not being performed? For instance, imagine that Bea shoots Chad. Her shooting makes Chad worse off than he otherwise would have been. But, how would Chad have been otherwise? What does Bea DO in those other scenarios? Does she do something else? Does she remain motionless? Is she completely absent from the scenario? Consider a case: Button Pusher Bea stumbles upon an evil scientist who has rigged someone to experience excruciating pain. There are 100 buttons, from 0 to 99. If Bea does nothing, the victim will suffer the excruciating pain (level 100 pain). If she pushes button 99, the victim will suffer slightly less (level 99 pain), etc. If she pushes button 0, the victim will not suffer at all. Bea pushes button 99. Is the victim worse off the he otherwise would have been had (a) had Bea remained motionless? No, he s better off. (b) had Bea been totally absent? No, he s better off. And yet, we want to say that Bea has still HARMED the victim, don t we?

5 The victim is surely worse off than he otherwise would have been had Bea pushed any of the other buttons (0-98). So, perhaps we can say that Bea has harmed the victim because the victim is worse off than he would have been in the nearest possible worlds where Bea did something other than push button 99. But, that s not quite right. For, perhaps Bea does not push any of those other buttons in the nearest alternative scenarios: For instance, imagine that Bea is a huge fan of the doing-allowing distinction, and believes that doing harm is much worse, morally, than allowing harm. So, rather than allow excruciating pain by doing nothing, at the last second she decides she wants to CAUSE harm by pushing 99 (believing that causing pain of level 99 is much worse than allowing pain of level 100). It seems that, in the nearest possible worlds where she doesn t push 99, she does nothing, and the victim is worse off. So, apparently she has benefitted the victim by pushing 99. That won t do. Norcross s Solution: Context Matters: It just depends on the context. We consider Bea s act a harm because, given the context, we compare it to some other normal alternative we probably have in mind a normal person who cares about suffering, etc., and that person would turn the dial to zero. Norcross thinks that the same exact action can be a benefit in one context and a harm in another. He gives an example of his father leaving him half of his estate in his will. Had his father said he would leave the WHOLE thing, this is a harm. Had he vowed to leave NONE of it, this is a benefit. Ultimately, Norcross proposes the following: Action A harms some person P iff A leaves P worse off than P would have been had some alternative action, B, been performed Where B is whichever SALIENT alternative that is determined by the context. [A note on salience: Merely THINKING about or TALKING about it can t make an alternative salient. For instance, Norcross gives an example: Spider-Ben Ben s friends are nerds debating, What if Ben were Spider-Man etc. for a long time. Ben comes up and explains that he just spent an hour in a traffic jam on his way to help his grandmother who was in pain and in need of help. They say, You harmed her, because the alternative would be to have used your spider-powers to zoom across town and help her an hour sooner. Clearly that alternative is RELEVANT due to the context of the conversation, but it s not the sort of salient/relevant alternative Norcross has in mind. For starters, ought implies CAN, and Ben CAN T shoot webs from his wrists. So, we throw out impossible alternatives.] [Salience still sounds pretty vague. Is this account satisfying?]