Newsgroups: bit.listserv.politics
Date:         Fri, 11 Sep 1992 11:46:46 EDT
From:         Jamie <PL436000@BROWNVM.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: KAT is bad if and only if Jimbo is harmful

I hate to disturn the peace, but. Well, no, I love to disturb it.

>From:         jimmy donal wales <jwales@SILVER.UCS.INDIANA.EDU>

>Jamie gives a handy example: criminal trespass.  I would like to
>modify the example (for now, anyway) to simply 'trespass', without
>the 'criminal' modifier.  I want to make this modification to avoid
>questions about whether or not I am harmed just because someone is
>breaking the law.  (After all, to tie this back to politics, our
>key mission here is to decide what the law ought to be in the first
>place!)

Sure. Actually, I only said "criminal trespass" to distinguish it
from innocuous trespass, the kind that doesn't seem wrong at all.
But whatever.

>Let's distinguish carefully between 'ex post harm' and 'ex ante harm'.
>(I just made these terms up, so I guess I had better explain them.)
>I am ex post harmed whenever some action actually harmed me.  For
>example, if you put poison in my coffee and I drink it, then I am
>actually harmed.
>
>I am ex ante harmed whenver some action might reasonably be expected
>to harm me.  (With the 'reasonably be expected' operation varying
>depending on the specific factors of the case.)  For example, if you
>put poison in my coffee but I just happened to pour it out (and I
>never ever found out about it or anything like that) then surely
>I was not ACTUALLY harmed.  Hell, I don't even know it happened.
>
>But I was harmed in the ex ante sense.  You put my life in serious
>danger.  Only luck saved me.

Ok, I am willing to accept that ex ante harm in this sense might
qualify as a kind of harm. In response to Richard, I might say
that for all that Jimbo has said, the kinds of harm admitted
might be only physical sorts, or maybe clearly empirically verifiable
sorts, so that there isn't any necessary appeal to an evaluative
concept involved.

But Jimbo's response to the example seems pretty implausible.

I mentioned in response to KAT that there are two different kinds
of ex ante harm (I didn't use that coinage, but I will now). There
is the putting of a person in subjective danger of harm, that is,
making the person believe that she is in danger. And then there
is the objective danger of harm--a person can be in danger of harm
without knowing it. Jimbo obviously means the second kind.

Now, I very much doubt that the kind of trespass I gave in my
example puts anyone in objective danger of harm. Suppose I go
for a swim in Jimbo's swimming pool. It is VERY unlikely that
I will cause him any harm. I won't break anything; if I did, I
would pay for it. If all that's meant is that my action MIGHT
conceivably result in some harm, then virtually anything I do
fits that criterion. Not a very useful notion of harm.

I would also like to know whether Jimbo would accept this principle:
if two actions cause equal harm, whether ex ante or ex post, then
they must be equally bad.

I think that is extremely implausible. But if the fundamental idea
is supposed to be that badness *consists of* some kind of harm,
then the principle ought to follow.

>The equivalence I postulated only applies to the combination of ex post
>and ex ante harm.  The two together are the same as bad.

There, see? If the two together are "the same as" bad, then equal
harm implies equal badness.

I hope I'm muddying your waters.

Jamie
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