Shall be the only law
I
have always found people who say that you should always "challenge and
question everything" and how we must always "oppose authority" and
people should "do their own thing" to be somewhat ridiculous. It's just
that every single time that I have read or heard these cliches being
expressed, there always was this unspoken implicit continuation "...as
long as my side is not in power." Yes, I mean it: every single time.
And the more enthusiasm there was for always challenging everything,
the more obvious it was what the fate of dissidents would be after the
revolution.
Even so, perhaps the single most idiotic way of argumentation that I often see mindlessly applied is that some activity should be accepted or legal because "it doesn't harm anyone". There might be a chance that this phrase is just well-known common shorthand for some more solid argument, but I kind of doubt it. (If it is, could somebody point me to the right direction so I can see it, please?) I find this argument so stupid because even though standing by itself, the rule "an action is morally acceptable if and only if it doesn't harm anybody" sounds good and certainly makes a great bumper sticker, in reality it simply does not work at all and makes no sense.
For starters, this rule is far too restrictive. According to it, it would be wrong to apply for a job for which there are several applicants, since your getting this job harms the person who was the second choice. Similarly, a company inventing a product that makes some other company's product obsolete harms the employees and shareholders of that other company since they can no longer profit from their product. Yes, I would say that taking away somebody's livelihood constitutes "harming" him by any reasonable definition of this word. The proponent of the ethos "an action is morally acceptable if and only if it doesn't harm anybody" therefore quickly has to add all kinds of qualifications and exceptions until his whole framework essentially collapses into naive utilitarianism.
Second, the rule is absolutely meaningless without an objective and operational definition of "harm". For example, many Muslims currently seem to be very hurt by the famous Danish cartoons. Similarly, many Christians feel very hurt about gay marriage, another thing that famously never seems to harm anybody. Of course I can't see into their brain to measure if these people are really "hurt" or just pretending to be, but based on their externally observable behaviour, I tend to believe them. At this point, the proponent of this ethos can do no better than spin ad hoc explanations why somebody "really isn't harmed" even though he sincerely feels that he is, or to explain that when you hurt only feelings, it is not really "harming" at all. (Very well, let's see if you still think this way if I start mocking rape and cancer victims.) Or as seems to be common with these particular examples, argue that harming some people actually isn't that bad since they don't really count. For example, Pat Robertson's feelings and anguish seldom seem to be much concern to anybody.
Perhaps the rule could be modified so that it says "an action is morally acceptable if and only if it doesn't cause anybody having justified feelings of harm". But this is just a sleight of hand that tries to sweep the problems under the word "justified". Hiding these problems doesn't make them go away, since people can't agree at all when somebody's feelings of being harmed by somebody else's very existence are justified. We can see this vividly in, for example, the anguish of mom-and-pop stores when Wal-Mart comes to town. (By the way, I think it's quite funny how the vocal proponents of gay marriage and the vocal opponents of Wal-Mart tend to be the exact same people, who totally reverse their logic of what constitutes "harming others" when they switch between these two tasks.)
Third, all our actions have a vast array of direct and indirect consequences that we are not able to track or perceive. The butterfly flapping its wings causing a hurricane and so on. Anything that we do is certainly somehow bound to harm other people. This ethos simply turns ignorance into virtue: as long as you are suitably unaware of the consequences of your actions, you can do anything you want!
At this point, I would like to link to the absolutely excellent article "A really, really, really long post about gay marriage that does not, in the end, support one side or the other" in the blog "Asymmetrical Information". This article, among many other things, explains why the common practical arguments of the form "We must allow X, since I can't see X harming anybody because I sure know that it wouldn't harm me" are invalid, which in turn has a huge practical effect on whether we can draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable actions based on whether it "harms" somebody or not.
By the way, speaking of libertarians, some libertarian evangelists actually do claim that in a libertarian society, you can do anything you want as long as you don't harm others. I don't know how they can do this with a straight face. Real libertarian thinkers of course know better than to spout such inanities, but I am sure that this airheaded bumper sticker definition of libertarianism is useful in gaining converts in the hippie, leftist, wicca feminist, scifi nerd and LGBTQTSTVSSETC communities in universities. But in reality, as every real libertarian fully knows, whether some action harms somebody has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with that action being allowed or forbidden in libertarianism.
An action harming others never even enters the calculations to decide whether it is allowed. Libertarianism simply posits an all-encompassing framework of notions of "property" and "ownership", and as long as your actions respect the restrictions of this framework and you don't "initiate force" against others (where "initiate" and "force" are defined within this libertarian framework of property and ownership), you can harm other people as much as you feel like.
(Edited to use "harm" instead of "hurt")
Even so, perhaps the single most idiotic way of argumentation that I often see mindlessly applied is that some activity should be accepted or legal because "it doesn't harm anyone". There might be a chance that this phrase is just well-known common shorthand for some more solid argument, but I kind of doubt it. (If it is, could somebody point me to the right direction so I can see it, please?) I find this argument so stupid because even though standing by itself, the rule "an action is morally acceptable if and only if it doesn't harm anybody" sounds good and certainly makes a great bumper sticker, in reality it simply does not work at all and makes no sense.
For starters, this rule is far too restrictive. According to it, it would be wrong to apply for a job for which there are several applicants, since your getting this job harms the person who was the second choice. Similarly, a company inventing a product that makes some other company's product obsolete harms the employees and shareholders of that other company since they can no longer profit from their product. Yes, I would say that taking away somebody's livelihood constitutes "harming" him by any reasonable definition of this word. The proponent of the ethos "an action is morally acceptable if and only if it doesn't harm anybody" therefore quickly has to add all kinds of qualifications and exceptions until his whole framework essentially collapses into naive utilitarianism.
Second, the rule is absolutely meaningless without an objective and operational definition of "harm". For example, many Muslims currently seem to be very hurt by the famous Danish cartoons. Similarly, many Christians feel very hurt about gay marriage, another thing that famously never seems to harm anybody. Of course I can't see into their brain to measure if these people are really "hurt" or just pretending to be, but based on their externally observable behaviour, I tend to believe them. At this point, the proponent of this ethos can do no better than spin ad hoc explanations why somebody "really isn't harmed" even though he sincerely feels that he is, or to explain that when you hurt only feelings, it is not really "harming" at all. (Very well, let's see if you still think this way if I start mocking rape and cancer victims.) Or as seems to be common with these particular examples, argue that harming some people actually isn't that bad since they don't really count. For example, Pat Robertson's feelings and anguish seldom seem to be much concern to anybody.
Perhaps the rule could be modified so that it says "an action is morally acceptable if and only if it doesn't cause anybody having justified feelings of harm". But this is just a sleight of hand that tries to sweep the problems under the word "justified". Hiding these problems doesn't make them go away, since people can't agree at all when somebody's feelings of being harmed by somebody else's very existence are justified. We can see this vividly in, for example, the anguish of mom-and-pop stores when Wal-Mart comes to town. (By the way, I think it's quite funny how the vocal proponents of gay marriage and the vocal opponents of Wal-Mart tend to be the exact same people, who totally reverse their logic of what constitutes "harming others" when they switch between these two tasks.)
Third, all our actions have a vast array of direct and indirect consequences that we are not able to track or perceive. The butterfly flapping its wings causing a hurricane and so on. Anything that we do is certainly somehow bound to harm other people. This ethos simply turns ignorance into virtue: as long as you are suitably unaware of the consequences of your actions, you can do anything you want!
At this point, I would like to link to the absolutely excellent article "A really, really, really long post about gay marriage that does not, in the end, support one side or the other" in the blog "Asymmetrical Information". This article, among many other things, explains why the common practical arguments of the form "We must allow X, since I can't see X harming anybody because I sure know that it wouldn't harm me" are invalid, which in turn has a huge practical effect on whether we can draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable actions based on whether it "harms" somebody or not.
By the way, speaking of libertarians, some libertarian evangelists actually do claim that in a libertarian society, you can do anything you want as long as you don't harm others. I don't know how they can do this with a straight face. Real libertarian thinkers of course know better than to spout such inanities, but I am sure that this airheaded bumper sticker definition of libertarianism is useful in gaining converts in the hippie, leftist, wicca feminist, scifi nerd and LGBTQTSTVSSETC communities in universities. But in reality, as every real libertarian fully knows, whether some action harms somebody has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with that action being allowed or forbidden in libertarianism.
An action harming others never even enters the calculations to decide whether it is allowed. Libertarianism simply posits an all-encompassing framework of notions of "property" and "ownership", and as long as your actions respect the restrictions of this framework and you don't "initiate force" against others (where "initiate" and "force" are defined within this libertarian framework of property and ownership), you can harm other people as much as you feel like.
(Edited to use "harm" instead of "hurt")
Libertarians never seem to see the irony in spending a disproportionate time talking about how stupid everyone while simultaneously advocating a system of government that assumes that everyone is intelligent and capable of making good decisions. I've never quite figured this one out.
Posted by Sean | 11:00 PM
The only reasonably sane version of the "no harm" argument I have seen is the "victimless" crime laws. I think that falls under the libertarian property rights argument as a special case, however.
Posted by Kraryal | 5:08 AM
The claim that an action is morally acceptable if and only if it doesn't harm anybody is pretty implausible, but a proponent of 'perhaps the single most idiotic way of argumentation' could get by with the claim that an action is morally acceptable if it doesn't harm anybody, rather than the biconditional you seem to take them to need. I thus can't see what relevance your examples of acceptable actions that do cause harm have.
Posted by Russ | 12:27 PM