title: Harm, change, and time.
abstract: What is harm? I offer an account that involves the victim's either suffering some adverse intrinsic change or being prevented from enjoying some beneficial intrinsic change. No one is harmed, I claim, in virtue of relational changes alone. Thus (excepting for contrived cases), there are neither posthumous harms nor, in life, harms of the undiscovered betrayal, slander, reputation-damaging variety. Further, two widespread moves in the philosophy of death are rejected. First, death and posthumous are not to be assimilated--death does bring about adverse internal change and harms us straightforwardly. Second, Pitcher-type accounts of posthumous harm are criticized--posthumous events can thwart the satisfaction of my interests, but I am not harmed either just when this occurs or, earlier, when I first acquire or invest in those interests. We have other ways of describing what is going on.
authors.affiliation: The Open University, UK. c.d.belshaw@open.ac.uk
authors.forename: Christopher
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Belshaw
mesh_terms: D026688:Bioethical Issues; D003643:Death; D028781:Ethical Relativism; D018594:Human Body; D006801:Humans; D009014:Morals; D028723:Personhood; D012938:Social Perception; D014754:Violence / Q000941:ethics*