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Newsgroups: bit.listserv.politics
Date:         Tue, 8 Sep 1992 22:31:00 EDT
From:         rf35 <Richard_A_FYFE@UMAIL.UMD.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Bad v. Harmful
Comments: To: Forum for the Discussion of Politics <POLITICS@ucf1vm.cc.ucf.edu>

Greetings:

        Since I started this "bad vs. harmful" stuff I figure I
should try to make a meaningful contribution.  The discussion
when one person (name forgotten, sorry) wrote that things are
bad because they are harmful, and Kerry wrote that she this
was backwards, things are harmful because they are bad.  I
wrote that both accounts are mistaken--that "harmful" is a
species of "bad;" it does not cause or bring about badness.

        Now, to be more specific, the term "harm" is a value-
laden term.  In order to determine if X is harmful, we must de-
termine whether it is bad.  There is no such thing as a good
harm.  Indeed, a good harm is like a round square, a contradic-
tion in terms.  So, it makes no sense to say that something is
bad because it is harmful.  If it wasn't bad (or cause badness)
we would not say it was harmful.  We do, however, allow for the
conceptual possibility of harmless bads (harmless wrongdoing,
victimless evils).  Though many (myself included) argue that
no such things exist, they can not simply be dismissed as con-
ceptual confusion.  It is possible that there are more types
of badness than just harms; but still all harms are bad (and
necessarily so).

        In order to determine whether some action is 'harmless'
it is necessary to determine if it, or its consequences, contain
any of whatever type of badness it takes for something to count
as a harm.  We can not say it is bad simply because it is harm-
ful.  It is necessary to go further and determine what 'harm'
consists in, and how to make and defend whatever value-judgments
are presupposed by referring to something as a 'harm.'

        Kerry's claim that things are harmful because they are
bad is partially correct, but Kerry failed to provide an inde-
pendent account of what badness consists in.  Also, her example
suggested that badness CAUSED harm, without explaining how this
causal relationship worked or what it consists in.  There is bad-
ness associated with harm, but this relationship does not seem
to be a causal relationship but, rather, an association of a
more intimate kind.

        I hate to alienate my allies but I have perhaps spent
more space arguing against them than the usually opponents that
someone who adopts a liberal philosophy would adopt (the last
few weeks being a notable exception).  However, I think that
liberals tend to use a question-begging definition of 'harm'.
In order to determine of a policy is harmful they determine
whether it violates the harm priniple.  For example, is there
any reason to require that the thwarting of the homosexual's
desire to have open relationships with members of the same gen-
der is a harm, while thwarting the desires of individuals who
are disgusted by homosexual behavior is not to count as a harm?

        The conservative option avoids the question-begging
nature of many liberal claims.  They break the circle between
'harm' and 'bad' by making an appeal to some type of external
criterion of value.  However, they have failed to provide any
reason to believe that the source of their values has any more
substance than Santa Clause--a popular myth.  It is not the
lack of evidence which is the most disturbing, but rather the
claim that no evidence is required.  Logic and reasoning are
thrown out the window.  And, when that happens, all the words
uttered become meaningless sounds.  Communication is rendered
impossible.

        Anyway, I've posted my alternative.  I've enjoyed the
chance to do a little meta-politics, I prefer it to the standard
discussion.  I hope my contributions have been useful.

                                        Richard A. Fyfe
                                        rf35@umail.umd.edu
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