How Many Harms?

Mike,

How many people did you harm? Did you harm Smith and Smith*? I think the answer is no.

I still think the answer is yes. But notice that one can say yes without also saying that when Smith* comes into existence there is a greater amount of harm. For the number of harmed people can change, without the number of harms changing. You seem to admit this much in "Mars Harm Two". You say:

You caused the same number and severity of harms in each case.

But then you go on to say:

Suppose that for each replication of Smith, we add yet another harm that Jones caused. It is easy to see how to create a moral monster. Take the harm and replciate it indefinitely. For each replication, Jones is the cause. Jones can easily go from inflicting a serious harm on Smith to a great moral monster. All we need is replication. But it seems clear that replication does not make a moral monster of Jones.

I don't know what I am to be supposing. I agree that replication does not make a moral monster out of Jones, for replication does not increase the amount of harm that Jones causes. Replication increases only the number of persons to which the harm is directed. And Jones is not responsible for that.

Your moral:

I offer Mars Harm and Mars Harm Two as instructive about the number of harms caused in cases where a mother causes three fingers of her fetus to become detached, the fetus is "teletransported" into the child who is left with three fingers missing.

I'm not sure I understand the moral, but it's worth noticing that the Mars cases are different from the fetus case. For in the fetus case we have an individual, a fetus, that is not harmed since it is not a person, and a child that is harmed and it is a person. And so we can agree that there is no greater amount of harm done when the fetus becomes a child, but that is because all of the harm there is in the case arises when the child, and later, the adult, has lost the ability to use its fingers.

Hi Mike
I suppose you knew that this was coming.

t seems to me that there are a number of metaphysical/epistemological factors that need to be brought out in order to make you case. I grant that Smith and Smith* are two distinct persons. So what? You need to show that the body is not a factor in determining personal identity. If you are assuming that it is not, then your argument works. I see no reason for the assumption. The question arises as to how, in your scenario, Smith* accounts for his missing fingers if he has no memories of how they were lost. But, part of his memories is that he is missing three fingers. What other memories does he have concerning them? Smith* may not hold you responsible because he does not know (and cannot know) that you removed the three fingers from Smith. But what about those who know what you did to Smith?

Counter-example: Imagine that you know that if you transfer a certain gene to your child that her children will be missing three fingers. If you have the gene removed there will be no harm to your grandchildren. You do not have the gene removed and low and beyond your grandchildren are missing three fingers. They know that had you had the gene removed they would have all their fingers. Are you not the cause of your grandchildren not having three fingers? Is it not the case that they can blame you for not having the gene removed?

Last question (for now) am I the same John Alexander as the one who has discussed this issue with you in earlier posts or am I distinct beings each time I post?

Let us look at an example from manufacturing. Let us imagine that an engineer has made a die and in the die is a defect that will be replicated in each casting made from the die. He knows that the defect is in the die but also knows that the defect will not adversely affect the performance of the castings. In fact, no one will ever see it. So he puts the die into production. Did the engineer cause the defect in each casting?

Add an adendum to my last comment

Imagine that as time goes on the defect increse to the point were a casting fails causign the machine the casting is part of to fail athereb killing the operator. The Engineer could have calculatd that the castings would begin to fail, but did not do the calculation. Did the engineer cause the death of the operator?

This is a corrected copy of my last comment. Sorry for all the errors in the original.

Add an addendum to my last comment

Imagine that as time goes on the defect increases to the point were a casting fails causing the machine the casting is part of to fail thereby killing the operator. The Engineer could have calculated that the castings would begin to fail, but did not do the calculation. Did the engineer cause the death of the operator?

I may not have the cases clearly in mind. I was assuming that "other things were being held equal" in each case. That is, I was assuming that the total amount of life lived, and it's quality, was the same in the first case as the second. I was assuming that in the first case quality and quantity of life was distributed between two distinct persons, Smith and Smith*, whereas quality and quantity of life was distributed only amongst one person in the second case. Is that not right?

If it is right, then here is a quick argument that shows that there can be distinct numbers of harms with the same amount. I shock Smith** for five seconds and Smith***, a different Smith, for five seconds. I then shock Smith** years later, in the exact same way as I did before, but for 10 seconds. The amount of harm in the first case is identical to the amount of harm in the second case, though there is a greater number of harms in the first. My claim was about amount, not number (though I certainly could have been more clear).

So I agree there are more harms in the first case, but is has the same amount of harm as there is in the second.

So I ask: In the moral monster case, is everything else being held equal? If it is, then I deny that one could make a moral monster that way. But not for the reason you are suggesting. For one is not increasing the amount of harm in the world (and so no greater amount of compensation would be owed). If other things are not being held constant, I'd need to know which changes you are assuming before I can get any intuition about the case.

This begs the question at issue. But let's settle the other two issues first.

That could accurately be claimed of any decent counterargument.

Mike:
I reread my 1st comment and apologize for the snarky tone with the 'so what." That was uncalled for.

Well, my own intuition is that how good you morally are is completely independent of what harms you in fact cause. In Case 1 you cause more harm than in Case 2. But you are not morally any worse in Case 1 than in Case 2. Consider:

Case 4: You sever three of Smith's fingers. But you didn't notice that Smith had eight fingers on that hand, which was very inconvenient for him (hard to find a spacesuit that fits, say), and he was on his way to a surgeon to get three of the eight fingers amputated. The ones you amputated were the very ones he wanted the surgeon to amputate.

In Case 4, you've restored Smith's hand to the normal five-finger state, and caused him no harm. But you are morally no better in Case 4 than in Cases 1 and 2.

Of course here I am assuming a denial of a certain form of moral luck. I am taking it for granted that you are no morally worse for being a murderer than for being an attempted murderer, and so on. This is, of course, controversial.

Suppose you disagree with me on moral luck, and you think that in Case 4 you are morally better than in Case 1. Fine. But if you believe that your moral goodness depends on the actual outcome of your actions, then you might have no discomfort in saying that you're morally worse in Case 1 than in Case 2. (Though even that is unclear. Here is why. You might think it is no worse to cause person 1 to lack three fingers for two years, and person 2 to lack three fingers for 28 years, than it is to cause person 1 to lack three fingers for 30 years. If so, then if the cumulative finger-loss time is the same in Cases 1 and 2, there is no difference in total harm.)

I did not claim that you were making that assumption. I was claiming that you need to make it for your argument to work in the Mars Harm Case (MHC). My reason for this is your assertion that "On every contemporary view, the personal identity of Smith is not preserved in Smith*. Smith* is a numercially different person." I do think that you do need to defend your idea of what constitutes personal identity (PI) in your thought experiment(s) in so far as you are making certain claims regarding 'harm,' 'cause,' 'responsibility, 'distinctness,' etc. as they pertain to your claims regarding harming C if F = C or -(F = C). If I understand your argument correctly, you are claiming that even though F is harmed that C is not harmed regardless of the identity claim regarding F and C. I am arguing that C is harmed regardless of the identity claim.
As I indicated in an earlier comment on an earlier post, how we are to understand ‘cause’ seems to be important in assigning harm. You did not respond to that, but I would like to know how you are using that term. It is relevant. In the Engineering Case (EC), does the engineer cause the defect in the castings? In on sense he does not, the die causes it. In another sense he does because he established the conditions under which the die would cause the defect. The same issue arises in the Grandparent/Grandchild Case (GGC). In the MHC it seems that the harm (defect) is replicated (like castings from a die) in Smith and Smith* regardless of whether Smith and Smith* have the same memories, or bodies for that matter. (I think I was in error in my earlier comment on this post regarding bodies and PI, but I am not sure). The Grandfather did not cause the harm in the grandchild; the defective gene in the parent of the child did. But the Grandfather did harm the grandchild by establishing the conditions under which the gene was allowed to be transferred to the parent and then the grandchild.
I would be interested in your response to these two cases as they pertain to MHC.

The harms that I impose in Mars Harm and Mars Harm Two do not have a temporal dimension. The harm is causing someone to lose his fingers.

I wasn't talking about this harm, I was talking about the harm of, something like, being unable to use one's 10 fingers. I'm interested in harms that do have temporal dimension. But, be that as it may, I do agree with you. There will be certain harms that do not survive replication. The one you point out, causing one to lose fingers will be one of those. For one has to have fingers to lose them, and the replicated never have the relevant fingers to lose. Going back:

I offer Mars Harm and Mars Harm Two as instructive about the number of harms caused in cases where a mother causes three fingers of her fetus to become detached, the fetus is "teletransported" into the child who is left with three fingers missing.

If by 'number of harms' you were to mean number of causings of some finger loss, then I agree with you. This number doesn't go up when a fetus becomes a child. But, again, my point was that the number and amount of harm, in another and more natural and important sense, does go up. For the child is caused to have a temporally extended harm, that of being fingerless and all that this implies. This harm survives replication. It is significant. It makes the detachment of the fingers of the fetus wrong. And, as far as I can tell, it is still an open question whether detaching the fingers of the fetus harm the fetus.

I agree that you are not assuming anything. I am in error. But how does this address my concerns regarding Smith and Smith*?

"How many people did you harm? Did you harm Smith and Smith*? I think the answer is no."

I think the answer is yes, for reasons stated above regarding EC and GGC. Why am I wrong? Please explain this to me because I do not think that I do understand what you are trying to demonstrate and I do want to understand it.

Mike
How this clear? "But it seems clear that replication does not make a moral monster of Jones."

If Jones is replicating a harm numerous times, this is different the M causing harm to F once. I agree that there is only one harm even if F becomes C. But in the MMC there is a larger population then one experiencing the harm coming from a single source. If Jones has a choice between harming 1 and harming 100 and chooses to harm 100 would we not consider him a moral monster? If not, what is a moral monster? Consider that the engineer in EC had a choice between not making any castings from the defective die or making as many as the die is capable of making. At some point the defect in the die increases to a point where the defect in the resulting castings will cause them to fail resulting in harm to the operators of the machines the casting is part of. I think the engineer (Jones) is the cause of these harms in so far as they would not have occurred had he not made castings from the die and that it was his choice to proceed to production. I think he is responsible for the resulting harms and that he can be blamed for them occurring.

Now, I think there is an ambiguity in the phrasing "number of harms caused." In one sense it is true that one harm is caused, say death, or the lose of three fingers, or the defect in the die. But I think it also means the resulting amount of cumulative instances of this one harm spread over that population that has it. If you mean to restrict the meaning to the former, I fail to see the significance of this claim. It would seem to have some strange normative consequences about how we assign responsibility and blame (or praise).

"I do deny that I harmed anyone who was replicated."

I agree that this is your position. What I find problematic is that you have not demonstrated (from my perspective) that it is the correct one to have. Smith** is missing three fingers the same as Smith* and Smith. Smith was harmed and he thinks he was harmed. Does Smith** consider not having three fingers harm? Under your analysis he should not. If he found out that it was the result of what happened to Smith and being replicated from Smith* who was replicated from Smith why would he be wrong in thinking that he was harmed and that the person doing the replication was the cause of the harm. Why not fix the replicator? Under your analysis I can see no reason why the person doing the replication has an obligation to fix it. I would argue that if he can fix the replicator and chooses not to then he is doing something wrong. Why? Because not fixing it harms the new replications. How would you handle liability cases such as the one that would result in the Engineering Case? Where would you place the blame? Or is there no blame?

I hope you are enjoying this exchange as much as I am.

"I mean, unless I am harming millions of people every day!"

This doesn't have to be the condition for blame. If I am not aleviating the harm of one person that I could aleviate then I am harming that person. This seems to follow from the second meaning of 'cause.' You seem tcontent to rest with the 1st meaning, but that does not show that the 2nd meaning is not also warranted. I think that is Singer's position: we are responsible not only for what we do, but also for what we can prevent.

If I may Mike and John,

John, I completely agree with what appears to be your argument. Allowing a child to drown in a pond is not simply failing to bestow a benefit upon him. That's a true description of the omission, but so is this: allowing a child to drown in a pond is not eating fish and chips. So what? It's wronging him nonetheless, and it is disgusting. Call it 'harm' or not, it's still wrong. It grounds moral condemnation. Though, and let me be clear, I agree with Mike that it is not harming him by causing him to lose fingers. But this is completely irrelevant. For allowing someone to suffer without a good reason is wrong, and that is the crucial point. I don't know if Mike accepts this or not, but it seems clear that one can accept that one does not harm Smith* or the fingerless child (in our case) but still accept that one allows something needless and bad to happen to it, and that is wrong. One can accept, that is, that causing something bad to happen to the child is wrong, without claiming that what this bad thing is, is losing fingers.

If Smith has a child while knowing that, it is possible that that child grows to be a mass murdered M, and that possible beings B1-Bn are killed by M, does Smith allow something bad to happen to B1-Bn by having a child that might be a murderer? Obviously not.

I agree with you, of course. And if the child grew up to be such a murderer, it still wouldn't be true that Smith allowed those murderings to happen. Consider this case:

POND: Smith has a child that wanders into a pond, and he watches the child's head go under, he can easily walk over and pick up the child, but this will soil his new shoes. So he doesn't and the child drowns.

Does Smith allow something bad to happen by watching the child's head go under the water and intentionally refraining from walking over to help him? Obviously yes.

BOMB: I come across a bomb that I know will go off in 200 years (in a crowded city) if it isn't deactivated. Instead of telling the proper authorities, I ignore it and chuckle. 200 years later it goes off and kills lots of people.

Do I allow something bad to happen by ignoring the bomb and intentionally refraining from telling the proper authorities. Obviously yes.

I take it that these cases show that 'allowing' and 'refraining' need to be interpreted intentionally, so that one allows F only if one knows that F will, or will likely occur unless one does a certain thing. This is why Smith's not refraining from having the murderous child is not an allowing of something bad to happen. So I can accept your case. Yet allowing something bad to happen to a fetus will, in many cases, count as allowing something bad to happen to the child it turns into. For we know that if we allow a fetus' fingers to be detached, this will likely affect the child's ability to hold things in his hand.

Mike
From your argument over the past few posts, you have to also conclude that the principle that ‘a moral agent will not eliminate evil whenever and wherever possible, all else being equal’ is false as it applies to allowing evil to exist. I can see from this discussion that there is no problem of evil (in at least one of its formulations) for you. God can allow evil to exist because allowing it to exist is not doing anything wrong even if He can come to the aid of those experiencing evil and decides not to. He does not cause moral evil to exist because that evil is the result of human free-will and He is not he cause of us deciding one way or another.

It seems to me that your entire discussion comes down to accepting the distinction between ‘doing’ and ‘allowing’ such that if I do x, and doing x results in harm, then I did something wrong because I caused x, but if I allow x to happen I did nothing wrong because I did not cause x. I think you need to present a stronger argument then you have to date for that conclusion. You also need to present an argument, other then the idea of a ‘conceptual confusion” (that can work both ways), that demonstrates that allowing x to happen is not causing x to happen.

But you deny that I let something bad happen to the fetus.

Well, no. I deny that anything in your argument establishes that the fetus is harmed, or that something bad happens to it. I'd like to remain neutral. It's unclear to me whether a fetus can feel pain, if it can, and if the detachment is a painful thing, then I'd say it has been harmed. But I think such a harm is no worse, in itself, than harming a chicken by detaching three of its toes.

My position has been that if A is a wrong to C then it is a wrong to F.

This is what I say the argument has not established. For it hasn't established that a fetus can be harmed or wronged. Moreover, I gave cases where one could accept that C has been wronged by being deprived of something important, through an allowing of a certain kind, while F has not been harmed by an allowing of that same kind.

Your position has been that A is a wrong to C but not to F.

Yes, I think cutting the fingers of a fetus off, knowing that the child that fetus will turn into will lose the abilities that come along with having five fingers, is causing something bad to happen, it is wronging the child, and it harms the child. I say it may harm the fetus too, by causing it pain, but that's all. And that depends upon whether fetuses feel pain or not.

I can't quite follow the fission case. You say "S does not suffer a wrong, though I remove three of S's fingers." How could that be? What does 'S' refer to? And if S1 grows his fingers back in the fissioning process, I guess I'd say one doesn't harm him or allow some harm to befall him. But if this is not true for S2, I'd say that if one is aware that this fissioning is going to happen, then one harms S2 by cutting S's fingers off. I don't understand why you deny that causation transfers through replication, or through fissioning.

I throw a ball and it causes the bulls-eye to depress, which causes a lever to move, which causes a seat to go down, which causes Mike to fall in the water. Do you deny that my throwing of the ball causes Mike to fall in the water in a such a case? I'm not seeing the difference yet.

In POND my failing to help does causally affect the person in the pond. Similarly for BOMB. But in the case I am discussiing. my actions do not causally affect S2 (or C). My actions causally affect S and S1.

No it doesn't. Imagine someone saying to you after you watched the child drown. "YOU CAUSED MY CHILD TO DIE!" That would be clearly mistaken. The same for BOMB, for one could say "I DIDN'T PUT THE BOMB THERE, SO, I WILL NOT HAVE CAUSED THOSE FUTURE PEOPLE TO DIE!" That would be clearly true. But both are still responsible. Do you accept that omissions are, or can be, causes? Do you think one wrongs the child in the pond, and the people in the future in the BOMB case?

Suppose in the fission case that S1 and S2 have the same psychology and whatever else is relevant to personal identity. Both have S's personality. However, S1 has red hair and S2 has blue hair. Does that fact exclude my detaching of S's fingers from causing one of these people to suffer a harm? And if 'having the same hair as' is irrelevant, why is 'being the same person as' relevant to the existence of this particular harm? I can see how personal identity makes a difference to who suffers harm, I fail to see how it makes a difference as to whether there is a harm.

"Well, if just we're expressing what we think, I think the argument is already strong enough."

I had just briefly repeated a longer argument that I had made a couple of times in earlier comments, but to which you did not reply. But to go beyond what I think, you make the following claim: "I'd definitely disagree that, in any case in which I allow something needless and bad to happen, I have done something wrong." The word "any" is inclusive so that you cannot claim this: “This is the central difference between the POND cases and the case I'm discussing. In POND my failing to help does causally affect the person in the pond," unless you can demonstrate that causing something to happen that is needless and bad for those that it happens too is not doing something wrong to those people. For me, this is what your overall argument turns on. My counter-argument was that if one causes x and x is an unnecessary and avoidable harm to those who experience x, then one has done something wrong. Why, because I caused it. I would argue that we assign praise and blame for only those consequences we cause. In my argument (and examples) there is no distinction between doing x and allowing x where x is a needless and avoidable harm that warrants blame for doing and no blame for allowing. It seems that your argument commits you to the idea that even if I cause something needless and bad to happen that is not wrong. My issue is that you have not sufficiently demonstrated this. There are some apparent inconsistencies in what you are asserting in various key points in your argument. This is why I think that you need a stronger argument. If you disagree, fine. It has been an interesting discussion.

Hi Mike,

(I haven't read the comments exhaustively, as a disclaimer.) Are we trying to decide how many people I harm in each case? Or how morally bad I am in each case? Or both? The way you phrase the question(s) seem(s) to vary between Mars Harm and Mars Harm II. And if you have a view where moral goodness doesn't depend on outcomes, etc.

Either way, I think I agree that I cause no more people harm, or am no morally worse, in Mars II than in Mars I. How could I harm Smith*? That would involve cutting off his fingers. But I've never even met Smith*! Sure, I cut off the fingers of someone very close to him. But not him.

Suppose through negligence I pass on a disease to a woman, and this disease has the potential to be passed from mother to child. After years of deliberation, the woman decides to have a child, despite the risk. Sadly, the disease is passed from her to the child. Have I harmed the child?

I think my intuition is No. But this is similar to Mars II. In both cases I harm someone very close (Smith, the mother) to the person in question (Smith*, the child), but not the person themselves. Maybe this is just another way of saying your conclusion ...