Harm principle mill page number11/11/2023 The latter case, it is true, requires a much more cautious exercise of compulsion than the former. A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury. There are also many positive acts for the benefit of others which he may rightfully be compelled to perform such as, to give evidence in a court of justice to bear his fair share in the common defence, or in any other joint work necessary to the interest of the society of which he enjoys the protection and to perform certain acts of individual beneficence, such as saving a fellow-creature's life, or interposing to protect the defenceless against ill-usage, things which whenever it is obviously a man's duty to do, he may rightfully be made responsible to society for not doing. If any one does an act hurtful to others, there is a prima facie case for punishing him, by law, or, where legal penalties are not safely applicable, by general disapprobation. Here is where he did so (I am not sure if this is in the part excerpted in our textbook and it’s faster to copy and paste): Unfortunately, he introduces a third category: actions that are potentially beneficial to others. It can be used against actions in the first category but not those in the second. Why? Because that would answer questions about when state coercion is legitimate. Mill tries to establish two categories of actions: those that harm others and those that are purely self-regarding. However, there is a more modest way of understanding it that is perfectly sufficient for our discussion of paternalism. I said that Mill’s official way of defining the harm principle posed quite a few problems. This class was about the interpretation of Mill’s harm principle. As such, the action would not be morally permitted.Mill’s harm principle Mill’s harm principle Notes for April 6 Main points His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.Įven if a particular act of harming another person might bring about an increase in total pleasure on a single occasion, that act may not be condoned by the set of rules that best promotes total pleasure overall. The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. …one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control. ![]() It is through Rule Utilitarianism that we can make sense of Mill’s “harm principle”. In the transplant case, killing the healthy man would not seem to be part of the best set of utilitarian-justified rules since a rule allowing the killing of healthy patients would not seem to promote total happiness one outcome, for example, would be that people would very likely stop coming to hospitals for fear for their life! Therefore, if a rule permitting killing was allowed then the maximisation of total happiness would not be promoted overall. ![]() Their view is that we should create a set of rules that, if followed, would produce the greatest amount of total happiness. Rule utilitarians, in whose camp we can place Mill, adopt a different moral decision-procedure. While Bentham does suggest that we should have “rules of thumb” against such actions, for typically they will lead to unforeseen painful consequences, in the case as simply described the act utilitarian appears powerless to deny that such a killing is required in order to maximise total pleasure (just add your own details to secure this conclusion for the act utilitarian). ![]() In this case, it would seem that total pleasure is best promoted by killing the one healthy patient, harvesting his organs and saving the other five lives their pleasure outweighs the cost to the formerly healthy patient. Imagine a case where a doctor had five patients requiring new organs to stop their death and one healthy patient undergoing a routine check. ![]() Judith Jarvis Thomson (1929–) raised the problem of the “transplant surgeon”. However, this focus on the outcome of individual acts can sometimes lead to odd and objection-raising examples. In addition to a difference in views regarding the importance of the quality of a pleasure, Mill and Bentham are also separated by reference to Act and Rule Utilitarianism and although such terms emerged only after Mill’s death, Mill is typically considered a rule utilitarian and Bentham an act utilitarian.Īn act utilitarian, such as Bentham, focuses only on the consequences of individual actions when making moral judgments.
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