Mill entertains the following objection in Chapter IV:
The distinction here pointed out between the part of a person's life which concerns only himself and that which concerns others, many persons will refuse to admit . . . No person is an entirely isolated being; it is impossibe for a person to do anything seriously or permanently hurtful to himslef without mischief reaching at least to his near connections and often far beyond them (78).
What is the objection he is considering? How does it undermine his position or argument? What is his response? What should his response be? Is there a response?
The objection is saying that since people are all connected, inflicting harm on anyone will cause harm on others. Therefore, if we harm ourselves then this will invariably hurt other people. This is a response to Mill's requirement that anything that doesn't harm others should be legal. Mill thinks that something that harms oneself should be legal; but this objection shows that something like this also harms others and should therefore not be legal under Mill's requirements.
ReplyDeleteThis argument appears very effective, but actually has a weakness. If self-harm hurts others indirectly and therefore should be illegal, so should many other things. If I were to go to Wal-mart to buy groceries instead of a smaller chain, i would be giving the owners of the smaller chain less money, which in turn could cause them to eventually go into poverty or famine (in theory). If my family is going to adopt an orphan, by virtue of that act we must appear at an orphanage and select one kid, leaving the others in what is likely an emotionally worse state because they did not get chosen.
So essentially if we take this objection to be true, it leads to an absurdity because it implies that many other commonplace or even encouraged actions should be illegal. If any indirect effect should be taken into consideration, all must be, and any action will have negative consequences for someone somewhere.
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