Topics Happiness

Question The consideration that harm is inherently related to the perception of the harmed (i.e., s/he who perceives that s/he has been harmed has been harmed) is widely accepted, and I even sometimes see philosophers on this site answering questions of ethics from this position. However, it seems to me that this way of viewing "harm" is too generally subjective. Are there widely accepted objective means for defining harm? What are they?

Accepted:
June 19, 2008

Comments

I wonder just how widely accepted this is. I suspect that most people, including panelists here, would agree that just because someone thinks they've been harmed, it doesn't mean that they actually were. In fact, it's perfectly possible that something someone takes to have harmed them actually did them good. (You might think your boss would be upset if he knew that you stood up to some obstreperous client. I know that he'd actually be pleased; he's been looking for an excuse to "fire" this client, you've provided it, and because I tell him what you did, you'll be in for a bonus at year's end.)

There are a couple of cases that might seem to support the equation of thinking one has been harmed with actually being harmed, but I'm not sure they're what you had in mind. First, suppose I think I'm in pain. It's been widely held that I can't be mistaken about this. I might be mistaken about whether the pain signals some sort of organic damage, but if I think I have a headache, it's odd to say that I don't -- even if it's all "in my head," if you get my drift. But that's a special kind of case.

Another sort of case might be when you've done something that upsets me. If my distress is unreasonable, I doubt we'd be inclined to say that you harmed me. If what you did could be expected to distress most people, we might count this as harm. For example: suppose you've mocked me in front of people whose opinion I might reasonably care about. The fact that I care is part of why I take myself to have been harmed. (Harm to reputation is a kind of harm.) If I were more thick-skinned, there would be no harm. But it might be unreasonable to expect me not to care.

I'm not sure how much that helps. As for objective ways of defining "harm," I don't have a lot to offer that's terribly informative, except to say that if I do something to you that interferes with your normal functioning, physically, socially, economically, emotionally... we might reasonably count that as harm. But the mere fact that I take myself to have been harmed doesn't settle the matter.