부산대학교 도서관

This chapter discusses a challenge to the counterfactual comparative account of harm. The account allegedly overgenerates harms, since it counts as harmful certain events that intuitively are merely failures to benefit. For example, it seems to imply that when one person fails to benefit another, the first thereby harms the second, since the second would have been better off if the first had benefited her. The chapter discusses the challenge, surveys some solutions that are instructive but inadequate, and defends a solution. It argues that there are cases where one person harms another by failing to benefit her, and these are cases of preventive harm. It considers the impact of the solution on the widely held belief that harming is worse than failing to benefit, and defends a position on the strength of moral reasons against harming on which reasons against harming per se are weaker than is widely believed.