Diacritica 25-2_Filosofia.indb - cehum - Universidade do Minho

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CLAUDIA REITINGER
responses for examples of that kind. If we are in a position in which we cannot
avoid harming another person, l as in the example above, it makes no
sense to demand that we should not harm a person. To demand the impossible
contradicts the principle ‘ought implies can’. According to the threshold
conception the doctor harms the patient but in this case his action is
not morally wrong. Similar to this example are all cases, in which a person
already is below a certain threshold and an agent cannot better the situation
for this person, however, not bringing him above the threshold. Because the
threshold notion does not imply that an agent is obliged to better a person’s
condition below the threshold, Meyer supplements the threshold conception
by the requirement to minimize harm. Th is means that we are obliged
to better the condition of a person although he is below the threshold.
Th e second objection is more severe. According to the threshold notion
of harm in many cases, which we normally assess as harming, no harm is
done. Th ese include all actions, which lead to the worsening of the situation
of people without bringing them under the threshold. Let’s suppose I am
very rich. My neighbour hates me for this. He destroys the fl owers in my
house entrance, scratches my car or steals my credit cart and goes shopping
on my costs. In all this cases according to the threshold notion my neighbour
does not harm me. We have to refer to the subjunctive notion of harm
in this class of examples. For that reason Meyer states that the threshold
conception alone is not suffi cient to defi ne harm. Because of the Non-Identity
Problem the subjunctive notion is not suffi cient as well, Meyer proposes
to combine the latter two as a disjunction. Th e subjunctive notion (III) and
the threshold notion (I) are understood as providing alternative necessary
conditions for harming. Or, in other words, the disjunction of (I) and (III)
is a necessary condition of harming.
(IV) (disjunctive) An action (or inaction) harms a person only if either
(I) this action causes the quality of life of that persons to fall below a specifi ed
threshold and, if the agent cannot avoid causing harm in this sense, does not
minimize the harm; or (III) if the agent causes (or allows) this person to be
worse- off at some later time t 2 than the person would have been at t 2 had the
agent not interacted with (or acted with respect to) this person at all (Meyer,
2005: 56.). [3]
3 T he translation from German to English is based on Meyers article ‚Intergenerational Justice’ in
the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Diacritica 25-2_Filosofia.indb 70 05-01-2012 09:38:21