In chapter 4, we considered a response to the Problem of Preemption that insisted, intui-tively people are harmed when harm is preempted. Any view of harm that says otherwise is mistaken. Once we have an account that arrives at the putatively correct verdict that people are harmed by preempted harm, the canonical statement of the Interest Theory arrives at the correct verdict that people have rights against preempted harm. But I argued we ought not go that way because the other accounts of harm we considered were found wanting. However, I have now suggested the Safety Condition is extensionally accurate (notwithstanding the complications of the Problem of Very Preempted Harm) in generat-ing rights against preempted harm. Why not make a directed appeal to somethgenerat-ing like
158 Theron Pummer has suggested climate change on a global scale might be an example. Climate change will cause large amounts of harm that is preempted along many degrees by lots of different types of cause.
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the Safety Condition in our account of harm and benefit? This view looks something like this.
Safety Account of Harm and Benefit. Y harms X iff (and because) Y makes X worse off than she would have been in at least one close world in which Y does not act as Y did. Y benefits X iff (and because) Y makes X better off than she would have been in at least one close world in which Y does not act as Y did.
If we amended the Interest Theory (Canonical) with the Safety Condition, we say people are not harmed by preempted harm, though have rights against preempted harm. If we amend the Counterfactual Account with the Safety Account, we say people are harmed by preempted harm, and so have rights against preempted harm (on the canonical state-ment of the Interest Theory). These views are extensionally equivalent, though intension-ally different.
The Safety Account of Harm and Benefit is similar to Tadros’s Complex Counterfactual View, according to which, ‘E harms X only if X is worse off than he would have been in a relevant possible world where E did not occur. Comparison with more than one possible world may be warranted in a single case, yielding different verdicts about harm and ben-efit’ (Tadros 2016a, 177). Key to the Safety Account of Harm and Benefit, as with Tadros’s Complex Counterfactual View, is that it is possible for X to be both harmed and benefited by a single act since there can be close worlds in which X is worse off than X would have been had Y not acted as she did as well as close worlds in which X is better off than X would have been had Y not acted as she did.
I would not be too worried if one takes all I say about the Safety Condition and builds it into their account of harm. However, let me offer two reasons why I prefer building safety into rights. Both of these reasons need to be taken on good faith since they reply on argu-ments not yet presented. However, it is worth flagging the Safety Condition’s relevance to harm now.
First, in chapter 6, I argue that merely being subjected to risk is not itself harmful. And then in chapter 8, I show that the Safety Condition is satisfied in cases of pure risk, such as Roulette. If we build safety into our account of harm, this means being subjected to risk
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is itself harmful. So, it is preferable to build the Safety Condition into our account of rights and say of our example of pure risk imposition, Roulette, though Shooter does not harm Target by playing roulette with her while she sleeps, she does violate her rights.
The second reason requires a little more introduction. Whereas the Problem of Very Preempted Harm suggests that the Safety Condition will undergenerate rights, the Safety Condition may also overgenerate rights. The Safety Condition requires only that there is one close world in which the right-holder fares sufficiently better through the duty-bearer acting as the duty requires. But there are many close worlds. Will not the Safety Condition be too easy to satisfy?
Take Plane Crash. There is a close world, through comparison with which, Passenger is made worse off by being denied admittance onto the plane. The Safety Condition is sat-isfied, so Passenger has a right against being denied admittance onto the plane.159 How-ever, there is also another close world, through comparison with which, Passenger is made better off by being denied admittance onto the plane: through comparison of world 1 and world 2. Does this imply that Passenger has a right against Attendant that Attendant deny Passenger admittance onto the plane? It might appear so—the Safety Condition has been satisfied. This is one example of the Problem of Overgeneration.
The Problem of Overgeneration gets worse after showing how the Safety Condition solves cases of pure risk. Currently, we are comparing the duty-bearer not acting as the duty requires with close worlds to the world in which the duty-bearer acts as the duty requires.
By the end of chapter 8, we see the Safety Condition also requires that we look not only to the closest world in which the duty-bearer does not act as the duty dictates, but to other worlds close to that world. Because the Problem of Overgeneration is not yet at its mean-est, I delay addressing it until chapter 8.
Relevant for our purposes at this point is that the Safety Account of Harm and Benefit will overgenerate harms and benefits. (So much is obvious from Tadros’s saying: ‘Com-parison with more than one possible world may be warranted in a single case, yielding
159 Again, subject to the other necessary and jointly sufficient conditions being satisfied.
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different verdicts about harm and benefit’.) One of the ways that I suggest we resist the Problem of Overgeneration is by appealing to the other considerations on rights, includ-ing the Doctrine of Double Effect and the Doctrine of Doinclud-ing and Allowinclud-ing.160 While one could try and appeal to these sorts of considerations to avoid the verdict that the Safety Account overgenerates harms and benefits, these agential considerations do not look like the sorts of considerations that affect whether one has been harmed. For example, if one accepts Doctrine of Double Effect, why would whether I intend the harm done to you affect if it is harmful or beneficial? But, it is plausible that it affects whether you hold a right against me. Because of this, it is better to build safety into rights and not harm so that we can resist the Problem of Overgeneration in these ways.
5. Conclusion
This chapter has introduced the Safety Condition as a solution to the Problem of Harm-less Wronging through focusing on the Problem of Preemption. In section 3, I gave a taster of the reasons we have to endorse the Safety Condition in addition to its extensional accuracy. And in section 4, I defended the Safety Condition against three objections. First, that the Safety Condition’s reliance on the closeness of worlds is too obscure to affect rights. Second, that the Safety Condition will undergenerate rights when harm is very preempted. And, third, that we ought build safety into our account of harm and not rights.
In the next chapter, we turn to the Problem of Pure Risk.
160 Introduced in chapter 3, section 3.3.
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