#4 – Must harms be experienced to be harmful? Fischer on unexperienced harm.

In this episode, I evaluate Fischer's argument that being betrayed secretly by one's friends and family would be harmful even if one were to never directly or indirectly experience anything from it. I consider two lives, one with a secret betrayal and another without it, though otherwise qualitatively identical. Fischer doesn't specify exactly why secret betrayals are harmful other than that they would set our interests back, so our intuitions that they are may be based in a confusion between direct and indirect effects of it. I agree with Fischer that a counterfactual intervener would falsify a weak experience requirement, that if one is harmed by a secret betrayal, then a shield would eliminate any possibility of experiencing it or effects of it, though, I argue, such an intervener would need to be infallible. I end with a brief description of my own view of the harm of death: destructivism. Incapacitations such as comas induced by strokes are similar to death in that they both are harmful in virtue of our loss of welfare at the time of their occurrence. 

Transcript

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Welcome to Mortality Matters, a podcast about conceptual issues in the philosophy of death and the meaning of life. I am your host, Matthew Turnberg. You may think that death cannot be harmful because it cannot be experienced, but is it necessary for something to be harmful that it be possible to experience it? To put the question another way, is it possible to be harmed by what cannot be experienced? What is the nature of harm anyway and what does it mean to harm someone? In this episode of the podcast, I shall cover chapter three of John Martin Fisher's book, death Immortality and Meaning in Life entitled Bads Without Negative Experiences. You may think that harms just are negative experiences like pain or perhaps more broadly. In order for anything to be harmful, it is necessary that you actually experience it, or at least that it makes some actual difference to your future experiences. There are however certain hypothetical cases that philosophers have imagined which challenge this doctrine, which we may describe as a strong experience requirement. Strong, because it requires that what makes something harmful is actually experienced. Fisher quotes philosopher Robert Nozick, to characterize a hypothetical scenario in which there's a secret betrayal. Quote, imagine we read the biography of a man who felt happy, took pride in his work, family life, et cetera, but we also read that his children secretly despised him. His wife secretly scorned him having enumerable affairs. His work was a subject of ridicule among all others who kept their opinion from him. Every source of satisfaction in this man's life was built upon a falsehood, a deception. Do you, in reading about this man's life, think what a wonderful life. I wish I or my children could lead it. This man lived a lie, though, not one that he told. This is a case in which your friends, your spouse, and even your children have all secretly betrayed your trust. So let's call it the secret betrayal case. NOIC argues that it is bad to be betrayed even if it's kept in secret. This is further evidenced by the thought that this kind of life is not choice worthy. If that is right, then the victim in the betrayal case who is betrayed secretly, is nevertheless harmed, despite never knowing about it, nor experiencing anything about it. Now, of course, it's important to note that not only does the person not directly experience the betrayal, but further they experience no indirect effects of the betrayal, such as the elimination of opportunities or certain other kinds of costs that the person may be unaware of. If you feel the poll of this case and think, yeah, I don't want people to secretly betray me behind my back, perhaps this may be the reason for your intuition. You may think perhaps that even if you never find out about the betrayal and the secrets are kept perfectly, you may still suffer from the loss of certain beneficial interaction you may have with these people. Your spouse may grow cold to you, or your children may grow up and no longer answer the phone, although you may never know why. These would be cases in which you would be suffering indirect effects from the secret betrayal. If so, then an advocate of the strong experience requirement would say that these cases pose no problem for their view precisely because it does make an actual difference to your experience, or in this case, the lack of experience of something beneficial. That you would otherwise experience if the people hadn't betrayed you? To help make this point more clear, imagine two lives in the one life. Everything proceeds normally, but in the second life one's, friends, family, and spouse, and children secretly despise you in the way as described in the secret portrayal case. However, your experiences remain the same between the two lives, the experiences of life, a say the first life are qualitatively identical to the experiences of life. B, the second life in which the person is portrayed secretly. But these are perfect secrets. Now we can ask, should we be indifferent between the two lives? If you were a spirit in heaven or wherever and you were given the opportunity to choose one of these two lives to lead, would you flip a coin? If not, then you might think, well, of course the first life is much more preferable to the second, but what would be the reason for your preference? Presumably it's not an irrational preference. You have some reason, and that reason is clearly because it's bad to be betrayed, and that being betrayed, even if in secret, harms you in some way, and of course it's relevant if we're only considering what would benefit you yourself. This is why we're considering. What would be prudentially beneficial to you when considering which of the two lives to choose? If you have the other intuition about the case thinking, well, if I don't experience it or even any consequence of it, then it doesn't matter to me. But if so, then I would also ask you if somebody has betrayed you, did they not wrong you? By doing so, even if you never find out about it. But how could they wrong you without harming you in some way? What would explain what made their betrayal of you really wrong? If not how they harmed you in some way. But then what does it mean to harm if you could be harmed by something that you cannot experience? Perhaps what the secret betrayal case shows is that you don't have to experience it to be harmful, but at least it must, in principle, be possible to experience something in order to be harmful. So this is what would differentiate a secret portrayal from something like death. Death, you may think, along with the epicurean is harmless precisely because even in principle, you cannot experience it. Now when I say that death cannot be experienced, I'm thinking about death here as the cessation of one's existence, not the dying process or the pain or the suffering that may result from that cause. Of course, pain and suffering are things you can experience, but that isn't death itself. And since death would cessate you so to speak, it's not the kind of thing that can be experienced. And if so, it cannot harm you. You might think. And what differentiates death from a secret portrayal is that even if you never actually find out about it because your friends or your spouse and your children even are really good at keeping a secret and really good about not modifying their behavior so as to make a difference to your life, they still treat you the same way, and yet they despise you secretly behind your back. Well, in that case, It's something you could experience, right? If you attended the meetings that your friends had in which they talk bad about you behind your back. That's the kind of thing that you could in principle experience. But death is not like that. It is not one of those things, which you could in principle experience, in some ways, you might think of it as the termination of experience or the liminal point at the end of experience. But not an experience itself. So this would be a weakening of the strong experience requirement to something weaker. You might describe it as a weak experience requirement. According to this principle, something can harm you only if it's possible that you can experience it. Now, the difference between a strong experience requirement on harm. And a weak experience requirement on harm is that according to the former, what makes something harm you must be an actual experience. Whereas according to the latter, a merely possible experience would suffice. Going back to the secret betrayal case, you never actually experienced the betrayal or even any result of the betrayal. However it's possible for you to experience it, the mere possibility of an experience is sufficient to satisfy. The weak experience requirement. However, John Martin Fisher thinks that even this weaker version of an experience requirement is false. He imagines a similar hypothetical scenario, just like this ordinary secret portrayal case, but this time he adds something to the case. He adds a character who erects an experience shield this person. Prevents you from ever finding out about the secret meetings or experiencing anything negative as a result of the betrayals, perhaps through super sci-fi wizardry or some other form of magic. This character has the ability to intercept information that would inform you about the betrayals. And stop it. Now. As a matter of fact, this person's services are never utilized. As a matter of circumstance, you never come across information which informs you about the betrayals from your friend, from your spouse, from your children. You just never find out about it. No information. Is ever revealed to you, leading you on. Nevertheless, this person, this counterfactual intervener, is poised and ready to intervene and stop any information if it were to ever come your way. It just so happens that this never actually occurs. Fisher likens it to an anti ballistic missile system that is dormant unless it senses a threatening missile and then swings into action. But as a matter of fact, it never turns on because no incoming missiles. Come in. It's important to note that this counterfactual, intervener character who's waiting in the wings to stop any information about the betrayals is infallible. It's very important for the case that it's impossible for this character to make a mistake because if some information, like an email or something, were to reveal to you, That your spouse has secretly betrayed you having affairs behind your back or, or whatever, and that in that case, clearly the anti ballistic missile system made a mistake and you just got bombed. So with the addition of this infallible character who can stop all information from reaching you, that reveals the betrayal. Let's redescribe this new case as the shielded betrayal case. In this case, your friends, family, and loved ones still despise you and talk bad about you behind your back, and your spouse still cheats on you. Your CH children still hates you, and the counterfactual intervener lies dormant the entire time for the duration of your entire life. Because as a matter of fact, no information that would reveal the betrayal happens your way and no consequence of the betrayal ever affects you. So adding an experience shield makes no difference to the harm of a secret betrayal provided. Of course, there was harm in the first case. There is the same kind of harm in the second case, however, because any information that reveals the betrayal is hidden from you by an experienced shield. Who's infallible. It is thereby impossible for you to ever experience the betrayal. If you thought that being betrayed like this harmed you, then you should also think that being betrayed in the shielded betrayal case also harms you for the same reason. The only difference between the two cases is the addition of an experienced shield, which never even turns on. So if so, then you are harmed, even though it is impossible for you to ever experience the harm. So a fisher is right then there's not even a loose connection between harm and experience in order to be harmed. It's not necessary that you actually experience what harms you, but also it's not even necessary that in principle it's possible for you to experience what harms you. Harm is logically independent of and disconnected from experience. Now on this note, I'm not exactly sure what Fisher thinks harm is if it is just disconnected from experience altogether. Now, he doesn't deny that pain and suffering as experiences are harms. He just has a wider notion of what harms are such that there's no necessary connection that you can draw between experience and harm itself. So what makes up for the difference you might ask? On this point, Fisher doesn't really tell us. He more or less just relies on the intuition that being betrayed is harmful without really explaining why. And note that if he were to try to explain why it's harmful to be betrayed in the secret betrayal case, he couldn't make use of experience as part of the explanation. Alternatively, you might think that the person who was portrayed in the shielded betrayal case is not harmed precisely because it's impossible for them to experience anything about the betrayals due to the experience shield. If this is your thought, then you might also think that betrayals are a bit risky, at least in typical cases. In this way, they would be somewhat analogous to firing a gun up in the air. By doing so, one imposes risks on others without their consent. Even if it turns out that no one was actually hit by any of the bullets that you shot up into the air, you still imposed a risk upon other people in your vicinity. However, if there was a guarantee that nobody would be hit, By the bullets. Suppose they evaporate in the atmosphere upon reaching a certain elevation or, or something like this. Then if that was the case, arguably you wouldn't be imposing a risk upon anyone else at all. You could think of risk as a combination of the probability of an event's occurrence together with the severity of its harm. If it turns out that certain guarantees. Are erected in the scenario such that the probability of the event occurring is equal to zero. That zero would zero out the risk, so to speak, and there would be no risk whatsoever. You might think similar things about drunken driving. The reason driving while drunk should be illegal is presumably because it imposes risks upon others risks of extreme harm, even if it turns out that the drunken driver doesn't actually hit anyone, they could and the probability. Of that danger was high enough to warrant punishment. Nevertheless, if there could be guarantees or barriers that could be put into place, that it would make it impossible to be harmed by someone who's driving while drunk. If there's no harm and no possible harm, then why should it be illegal? Why should it be wrong? Who does it harm? If there's no probability of danger, then there's no risk. However, John Martin Fisher argues that there is a relevant difference between firing a gun in cautiously or driving while drunk. And the shielded Portrayer case, of course, he concedes that in the first two cases, a guarantee of there being no harm would render the case's innocuous and there would be nothing wrong about the activities, or at least, so he says You may have other objections, but at least if there's a guarantee that no one will be harmed. That changes one's assessment as to the permissibility of those actions. Nevertheless, when somebody secretly betrays you, even if you never discover it, and even if it's impossible for you to ever experience anything that would lead you to believe the truth that you were secretly betrayed, then that case is relevantly different than firing a gun into the air and cautiously or driving while drunk. The relevant difference consists in one's reputation. So in the betrayal case, your friends, your alleged friends, I should say, gossip about you behind your back, your reputation is damaged. And you might think there's other interests at stake as well. For instance, the relationship you have with your spouse is damaged by, by the betrayal, even if you never find out about it. So given that we have an interest in having a good reputation or that we have an interest in having a healthy relationship either with one spouse or one's children, Then that would be sufficient to believe that being betrayed is bad for you. In fact, Fisher defines harms as setbacks of interest, what exactly it means to have an interest or what interests are. He doesn't really explain. He just says that we have interests. And further that when those interests are set back in any way, that's what it means to be harmed. Since we have an interest that our reputations not be besmirched, then we have an interest in not being betrayed secretly. I do think it's important to note that, that strangers cannot betray you the way your friends or loved ones can betray you. So there are interests at stake. That are undermined in the betrayal case that don't merely focus on one's reputation. If anything, one's reputation is almost of a secondary importance to the nature of one's relationships. And I think what makes the secret portrayal so damaging is that it damages one's relationships without one's knowing it. And further, these relationships are not of a casual nature. They involve one's children, one's spouse, one's friends, the people who are closest to oneself in life. So my point is that there are certain interests at stake, which are portrayed in the secret portrayal case that are not at stake when firing a gun in cautiously in which the people who are hit might be strangers, presumably, or, uh, while driving, while drunk. Now, of course, we can imagine variations of both of those cases where the victims are one's spouse or one's children who are killed by the drunken driver or what have you. But how those cases impact one's relationships are relevant to assess how they harm you. So Fisher initially posed the betrayal case as a counter example to a strong experience requirement that in order for anything to be harmful, it's necessary that you actually experience it in the secret betrayal. Something is bad for you and harms you, but is something that you don't actually experience. In response to this, an epi curion may reply by modifying the relevant principle in order to explain why death is harmless. But being portrayed secretly by one's friends or loved ones is not harmless. They do this by advancing a weak experience requirement according to which in order for anything to be harmful for you, it must at least be in principle, possible to experience it. In turn, Fisher responds with a modified version of the Betrayal case, which he calls the shielded betrayal case to illustrate why even this weaker principle turns out to be false in the shielded betrayal case. Not only do you never find out about it, but somebody is waiting in the wings to stop you from ever finding out about it, should any possibility arise in which you would get information revealing the betrayal. Fisher does this in order to draw an analogy between harms without experiences and the harm of death. The point here is to argue that death does harm you even if you never experience it, by softening you up, by describing other kinds of cases in which you don't die. In fact, nobody dies in these cases, and yet you are harmed by things you don't experience. An epicuren may respond by doubling down on a weak experience requirement by saying that the shielded betrayal case is harmless. Precisely because it's impossible for you to ever experience the betrayal or to even get information that it's occurring. They do this by drawing an analogy to shooting a gun in cautiously or driving drunk. Fisher explains that those cases are not relevantly similar to the shielded betrayal case, precisely because the relevant interests which are set back are the risk of harm by getting hit by the bullets or getting hit by the car when the experience shield. Is set into place either with a barrier or by having evaporating bullets. In either case, the source of one's setback to interests is removed by the barrier, but that is not the case in the shielded betrayal case because one has a reputational interest at stake among one's friends, at least, that should not be besmirched. And you may even further support this point by thinking about how people care about their reputations after they die. If you wish to leave a lasting impact upon the world, then. There is something you care about that in principle you will never experience, you'll never experience whatever legacy you leave to future generations after your passing. People seem to care about this sort of thing. Even in principle, it's impossible for you to ever experience that, and yet it might be good for you, or at least it may be bad for you. If upon your death, whatever legacy you set out to create is immediately discarded, thrown away or overturned. That would be a kind of setback to your interest. And if that's a harm, it would harm you after your death posthumously. While Fisher's argument can stand on its own and no further argumentation is needed, if this argument succeeds, I think he gives another case in order to illustrate H, how you could be harmed by things you cannot experience in a way that is more vivid and easier to understand. The shielded betrayer case involves someone waiting in the wings who will intervene if any information comes in, but actually doesn't. In the actual sequence of the entirety of one's life, this system remains dormant throughout the whole thing. And as such, all it's there to do when added onto the original betrayal case is to eliminate the possibility of experience while making no difference to what actually occurs. So it is a little bit unintuitive and intuitions that are generated by cases which are very science fiction like might be less reliable than a case that's a little bit more down to earth. So for this reason, I think Fisher describes another kind of case having a stroke. This stroke is a little bit different because it's painless, and what ends up happening to the person in question is they're struck down in the prime of their life and reduced to the mental condition of a contented infant. And he supposes in this hypothetical that his needs are met by a caregiver. He's free from pain or any suffering or worry. And furthermore, he'll be cared for for the duration of his life. Was this person harmed by the stroke? By stipulation of the hypothetical, this person suffered nothing negative in the content of their experience and yet to be reduced to the mental capacities of an infant. Even if the infant is content and comfortable looked after, has no need to cry because of a deficiency of a need that's unmet. Intuitively, it seems like this person was harmed, at least the demi nation of the conditions for their flourishing were undermined. Severely. You may think, for instance, that there's certain opportunity costs that this stroke imposed upon this person because they won't be enjoying all sorts of things that would require a more sophisticated cognitive architecture. And I don't mean just the joy of, of mathematics or of fine art or beautiful things or complicated things, or reading certain novels. Even just interesting conversation is no longer available to this person in a way that it used to be. Or even things like video games or movies. They're going to be beyond his comprehension. Fisher further stipulates that the person whose mental life has been reduced to that to a contented infant is exactly the same person who was, who fell prey to the stroke. This is important in order to understand how a stroke of this sort harmed the person, because suppose it's a different person inhabiting the same body, then arguably it wouldn't be very different than just being killed by the stroke that some other being would continue living in one's former body, perhaps with a different mental life would be a material to it being a new person. Then if it were a new person, then. The stroke would be fatal, but that's not the case. And it's importantly not the case to try to understand how something other than death can still be harmful in virtue of a deprivation, or at least that's how Fisher describes it. What Fisher thinks makes this kind of stroke harmful is not any actual experiences, but rather it's the deprivation of certain possible experiences or even thinks that are not experiences. Of course he doesn't stipulate that. So I think it's necessary for the shielded betrayer case to illustrate the falsity of the weak experience requirement, cuz I don't think this does. I think, well, you might say that what makes this event harmful is that it's possible for this stroke to be experienced, even if this one was not. Suppose it came upon him in the middle of the night or something. And he just woke up with the mental life of a contented infant. Furthermore, the deprivation of certain other possible experiences are part of what makes this harmful, you might think. Now what I would say is yes, of course, the person who is now a mental infant is deprived in some sense, in the sense that he will not capable of movies or video games or, or enjoying or comprehending any of those things. Were any of the other good things of life, wonderful career, excellent relationships or friends? I don't know about his reputation, but some of the other elements for what makes a life worth living are going to be deprived of this person after the stroke and the stroke is what presumably deprives him of that. But you might think of those as secondary harms. That is to say the stroke itself is one kind of harm that occurs at a certain time, and it's harmful when it happens. But the other kinds of deprivations occur at later times and are hence later harms. They're not part of the same harm. There a causal consequence of the stroke itself. And if that's the case, then you might think that what makes the stroke harmful is not any sort of deprivation, which may occur in the future, but rather the loss of the person's wellbeing at the time at which it occurs. And though the stroke was painless, it nevertheless happened to you, and as such, your welfare or whatever it was that was good for you at that moment. The good making features of what makes for a prosperous life were destroyed. They were destroyed in a way that you notice their absence only after the fact, but the actual destruction is what made the stroke harmful. That's what I would say. And importantly, the harm of the destruction of your capacities, of your welfare at that time is not comparative in any way. It's not an implicit comparison to your past self of a long time ago and what actually happened to you. Now, it's what happens at the time of the stroke. So Fisher describes these kinds of cases as incapacitation cases and says that these are very similar to death. The only difference between death as a kind of harm and a stroke of this sort is, well, in the stroke case you persist through the change. From a healthy, thriving adult into a mental infant, one in the same person persists through that change. But that's not the case with death because death extinguishes you, so to speak, it suss you. You do not persist. In fact, it's not really a change at all. In order for something to be a change, the subject must persist through the change. But death is not like that. Death perhaps is the only thing, not like that. You simply cease to exist. However, this difference isn't all that relevant according to Fisher as to whether death harms the one who dies. He thinks that the stroke case is much like death in that you don't experience what happens to you, but it still harms you and it doesn't harm you in virtue of any actual experiences that you undergo, much like the stroke, death harms you in virtue of how it deprives you of the very capacity to have experiences according to Fisher. Now suppose we make another use of Fisher's counterfactual. Intervener, an erect, yet another experienced shield around this healthy adult's life. Suppose that in any nearby possible world at which one does not actually die at the time, one does, but perhaps one lives on this counterfactual, intervener would come in and stop any positive experiences or any negative experiences from happening. Perhaps this counterfactual, intervener puts you into a coma. In that case, your death at that time would not deprive you of anything, at least not anything good, but in the actual sequence of events, the counterfactual, intervener. Lies dormant in that scenario, and we're describing a scenario in which the stroke actually just kills you instead of rendering you to the mental life of an infant. Suppose it just kills you instead, but in some nearby possible world, it doesn't prove fatal, and instead you are rendered to the life of a comatose person. Well, I think that death still harms you. But clearly it doesn't harm you because it deprives you of anything. Because in any nearby possible world, you're not deprived of anything, not anything good, and not anything bad. Nevertheless, in the actual world, death still destroys a healthy, thriving adult and renders that adult into nothingness, that adult ceases to exist. What makes that bad is not what could have would've happened, it's what actually does happen. That person's flourishing is destroyed. Whatever makes life good, gone for that person. I would argue that that's what makes death harm. The one who dies, not a comparison with some possible state of affairs that doesn't even happen, but with what actually happens, the loss of wellbeing that you have at that time. And if that's the case, it's not in virtue of any actual experiences, but it is in virtue of what actually happens. So if that's true, then I think a strong experience requirement would still be false, but only in virtue of harms, which can still harm you without you experiencing them like a stroke or just death. Nevertheless, something similar to a strong experience requirement would still be true. In order for anything to harm you, it's necessary that what makes it harmful actually occur. Mere possibilities are not harmful, and furthermore, they don't make anything harmful. All right. And with that, that's chapter three from John Martin Fisher's book, death and Mortality and Meaning in Life, and I hope that we can have a better understanding of why death can still harm us even if we don't experience it.