Harm

Abstract

The standard consequentialist account of harm is given by the following principle: HARM An act A harms a person P just in case P is worse off, as a consequence of A, than she would have been if A hadn’t been performed. An act A benefits a person P just in case P is better off, as a consequence of A, than she would have been if A hadn’t been performed. In most cases, there are multiple different alternatives, and no context-free method of determining which is the appropriate one with which to compare A. Judgments of harm are thus always implicitly relative to alternatives. There is no fundamental fact of the form: A really harms (or benefits) P.