In a recent piece for the Daily Sceptic, David Martin Jones and Michael Rainsborough object to the attempt by medical ethicist John Harris in the Telegraph to co-opt the famed liberal-utilitarian philosopher J.S. Mill to the side of mandatory vaccination. Mill was a keen defender of individual freedom, but allowed that actions which affect others may be regulated by Government. Harris argues that for a person to refuse vaccination constitutes, using Mill’s words, “a positive instigation to some mischievous act”, and thus is not a protected form of personal discretion.
Jones and Rainsborough object that this misrepresents Mill, who rather held that conduct may be prohibited under his famous ‘harm principle’ only if it is “calculated to produce evil to someone else”. This formulation of Mill’s principle suggests it is only intentional (“calculated”) harm to others that Mill thinks may be prohibited, while unintentional harm escapes the scope of coercive regulation.
But does Mill really hold that it is only intentional harm to others that may be coercively prohibited? It’s hard to square that with the following statement of his principle, found in the same essay (emphasis mine):
For such actions as are prejudicial to the interests of others, the individual is accountable, and may be subjected either to social or to legal punishments, if society is of opinion that the one or the other is requisite for its protection.
Plainly, actions that are “prejudicial to the interests of others” are not only intentional ones, as many unintentional actions can be prejudicial to others’ interests. Furthermore, Mill here is saying that it is up to “society” to determine whether, given such prejudicial action, some measure or other is “requisite for its protection”. It is therefore hard to see how an appeal to an action being unintentional can save it from coming under the scope of “harm” for Mill and thus subject to the control of “society”.
Besides which, Jones and Rainsborough themselves allow that Mill, as a “utilitarian and a moral consequentialist” would “quite possibly”, in the modern context given the existence of socialised healthcare, have argued that “if a responsible adult refused the vaccination the NHS offered to prevent an infectious disease, the individual would either forego any right to NHS treatment or be required to pay the cost of his care”.
Alternatively, Mill may well have just argued that “society” was entitled to determine that refusing vaccination in a context of socialised healthcare is “prejudicial to the interests of others” and so, under his principle, accountable and punishable. But even if Mill would personally have declined to make such an argument, there is nothing to stop others doing so on the basis of how he defined the principle, as John Harris has done.
The underlying problem here is with the harm principle itself. The notion that merely protecting ‘purely self-regarding’ action from social regulation and interference will guarantee individual freedom is, in the end, fundamentally mistaken. Such a category is far too narrow – or at least can be construed as far too narrow – to allow any real scope for freedom once “society” is given the right to determine what is “prejudicial to the interests of others” and thus subject to “punishments” according to its discretion.
What is needed, rather, is an underlying commitment to personal freedom notwithstanding that such freedom will often impinge on others’ interests in certain ways.
For example, many people may regard it as “prejudicial to their interests” to be offended, criticised or disliked. Or to be rejected, failed or disadvantaged by being bettered by others. Or (in a Marxist vein) to be subject to unfavourable power relations arising from inequalities in wealth or status. Or (to take the topic of the present article) to be infected with contagious disease or have public services burdened due to other people’s choices. Or to live in a society where people have easy access to ‘misinformation’. Or to experience a damaged natural environment. Indeed, it’s evident that all the currently most contested political issues relate to how our choices affect other people. And while Mill himself distinguished between “harm” and “offence” and argued that causing offence should not be prohibited, others may not agree with the niceties of this distinction, and anyway many of the current contested topics would not come under Mill’s definition of “offence”. Thus a principle that confines itself to defending purely self-regarding action is of almost zero assistance in these debates and a poor guarantor of freedom.
This is why we need a principle that defends freedom, not only when actions don’t affect others, but including and even especially when they do. We need a commitment to freedom that permeates all the necessary considerations of how to manage the fact that the interests of others are frequently engaged by the ordinary exercise of people’s freedom.
Consider vaccination. Let us grant that the Covid vaccines offer some protection against serious disease, at least for a while. In the context of socialised healthcare it is then useless to deny that something that significantly improves health outcomes may legitimately be construed as engaging the interests of others, and so is not purely self-regarding. This means the harm principle is of no help to us, as anything not purely self-regarding is handed over by it wholesale to “society” to determine the “punishments” required to address the prejudicing of the “interests of others”.
What we need instead is a deeper commitment to freedom that respects the individual’s autonomy over his or her body, notwithstanding that it may in certain ways be “prejudicial to the interests of others”.
When political declarations historically have set out rights to freedom of speech and assembly, to property, to self-government and so on, they have done so notwithstanding that the advancement of these rights will in many ways be “prejudicial to the interests of others”. Our cherished freedoms of speech, assembly, property and so on are not contingent on the idea that the “interests of others” will never be prejudiced by upholding them, but rely rather on the idea that respecting individual freedom is more important than never offending, upsetting, burdening or disadvantaging others in some way. Of course, the impacts of freedom on others need to be monitored and managed politically and legally. But for liberty to thrive such an enterprise needs to be done in a way which, at its core, treasures freedom above the feelings of others, and isn’t afraid to prefer individual liberty to the protection of “interests”.
In other words, we don’t need a harm principle; we need a freedom principle.
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“The Athenaeum Club … was a premier unlimited hangout of the London elite. Just check out its membership list, which included George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll, Charles Dickens, Benjamin Disraeli, George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen, Rudyard Kipling, Washington Irving, John Stuart Mill, Sir Robert Peel, Edward Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby, William Thackeray, Gore Vidal, …”
http://mileswmathis.com/wilber.pdf
If these so-called ”vaccines” were licensed, then this might be an argument. As it is, they are still in the experimental stage and therefore to order people to take such an experimental drug is in contravention of a whole swathe of ethical stuff, especially the Nuremburg Code. Dr Mengele would be proud.
The problem with the analysis and suggested remedy, is that Mill’s argument is (correctly) identified as consequentialist, but the remedy to it relies on applying a general principle. The attempt to bolt on a deontological qualifier to a consequentialist approach is flawed.
“This is why we need a principle that defends freedom, not only when actions don’t affect others, but including and even especially when they do.”
Much better to ditch Mill and the qualy counters completely.
All of this is predicated on the idea that the “vaccines” are safe and effective. We know they are neither. There is no ethical argument for enforced jabs with these faux vaccines.
Where there is risk there has to be choice. It should not be compulsory to risk harm to yourself in order to protect others.
A harm principle which respects freedom must surely allow an individual to act in ways that could inadvertently cause harm to others. Just about any action in society could be interpreted, by those so inclined, as a cause of harm to others. In my opinion, the right of an individual to choose to act in ways that could inadvertently cause harm to others ought to be defended unless the probability and extent of the potential harm are so high that prohibition becomes reasonable. This should be a very high bar. A respiratory virus as transmissible as SARS-Cov-2 but much more deadly might justify coercion provided the coercive measures were effective and proportionate (which lockdowns, vaccine passports, and mask mandates are certainly not).
In my opinion, the right of an individual to choose to act in ways that could inadvertently cause harm to others ought to be defended unless the probability and extent of the potential harm are so high that prohibition becomes reasonable.
It is a rather empty debate unless you get into more detail. How much potential harm makes what limitations reasonable?
There is also the problem of who assesses the potential harm and the importance of particular freedom in question. Most people see being vaccinated against Covid as a minor imposition (rightly or wrongly) and therefore a correspondingly low risk of harm will justify that imposition. Most people on this forum will disagree. You can hardly let every citizen decide for themselves whether maintaining a particular freedom outweighs the harm they might do. That would imply that any nutter who thinks that driving at 100 mph in a built up zone is a vital freedom should be allowed to do it.
Posing this as simply harm versus freedom grossly oversimplifies a complicated and subtle issue.
Here, in a few words, do not take this sh..
Obviously every society has to compromise between freedom and the harm that freedom might cause. No society gives you the freedom to drive on whatever side of the road you wish. No society dictates every single thing you can do. So it is not a case of a harm principle or a freedom principle. It is a case of deciding how to draw the line. I guess the distinctive feature of vaccines is that it involves control over someone’s body. So should everyone always have the freedom to control what is done to their body however much harm it might cause others? An interesting comparison is abortion where the ant–abortionist want to control a woman’s body because of the harm to the foetus.
1. These viruses are harmless to the vast majority. 2. The “vaccines” offer little or no protection against infection. 3. “Vaccinated” individuals can transmit the virus. Therefore the intellectual gymnastics in the article are irrelevant and redundant. Move on…
Complicated piece of Lawyer esc proportions ! My heads gone whist trying to decipher it 🤦🏼♂️
Mill:
“For such actions as are prejudicial to the interests of others, the individual is accountable, and may be subjected either to social or to legal punishments, if society is of opinion that the one or the other is requisite for its protection.”
How would wise judge King Solomon rule on this? I’ll be presumptuous and attempt to jump into his mind as he’s making his deliberations at the start of the pandemic in order to advise the government on the best way forward.
He’d have to begin his deliberations with herd immunity versus the vaccines, and about which of these a carrying host would pose the most harmful or detrimental threat to others.
The judge would, undoubtedly, have the information that the vaccines had not yet been put through the usual clinical trials and testing. Foremost in his mind would be the fact the vaccines are actually experimental and unproven medications.
The judge’s next insight would be that immunity is not experimental. It has been tested and put through the type of rigorous field trials that scientists can only dream about. Seven billion people on the planet would attest to the judge that immunity had… Read more »
Being “unvaccinated”, to use the globalists’ misnomer, does not amount to acting, and, hence, cannot be an “action … prejudicial to the interests of others”; it is no action, at all.
Rather, it is the “vaccinators” who are acting, and whose actions are prejudicial to the interest of others in not becoming the subjects of medical experimentation.
Not going to say you’re necessarily incorrect in your position regarding action/inaction. But insofar as the topic of this article is concerned (JS Mill’s philosophy), Mill explicitly included inaction:
“There are also many positive acts for the benefit of others, which he may rightfully be compelled to perform; such as, to give evidence in a court of justice; to bear his fair share in the common defence, or in any other joint work necessary to the interest of the society of which he enjoys the protection; and to perform certain acts of individual beneficence, such as saving a fellow-creature’s life, or interposing to protect the defenceless against ill-usage, things which whenever it is obviously a man’s duty to do, he may rightfully be made responsible to society for not doing. A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury. “
JS Mill, On Liberty, Ch 1 Introductory [Pg 20]
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34901/34901-h/34901-h.htm
Mark,
Thank you.
You’ve really blown Mill’s cover. The author of “On Liberty” was yet more controlled opposition.
With his stretching the definition of a word to encompass that of its antonym, he was ninety years ahead of “Orwell”. I think we have to admire his chutzpah, and his sleight of tongue (or quill) makes the recent “silence is violence” look timid (in addition to vacuous).
Of course, if I choose to take some action, this raises the possibility of conflict between my rights and those of some other, and, on the same basis, a desirability for the community to arbitrate. The distinction that Mill intended to obscure is that the community (or our overlords, who may, from time to time, claim to be operating on behalf of the community) dictating actions to me is an entirely different matter, and one that places me squarely in the position of a slave.
The swamp is deeper than most of us appreciate, and we are still sinking. We now need to build a dyke: https://ourdecisiontoo.com/Issue/there-s-nothing-left-to-do-but-go-our-separate-ways/320/
“We cannot insure success, but we can deserve it.” – John Adams
All this philosophising, all this handwringing, all this “This is why we need a principle that defends freedom” bollocks means nothing to these men. All they want to know is “what the fuck did we fight and die for?” As I see it, they fought and died for nothing. In eighty years, we have gone from ‘show me your papers’ to ‘show me your papers.’ …Yes, that is Normandy.
Well…actually it’s the insistence that the unvaccinated be vaccinated which is the thing “prejudicial to the interests of others;” i.e. you want me to take a series of experimental gene therapy shots that might injure or kill me.
Am I missing something?
The argument is: we have to protect the NHS. Same argument as with seatbelts. So it seems inevitable that “free” healthcare, inevitably leads to fascism. The system “owes” you care and therefore you “owe” the system compliance.
You have to hand it to them, despite the narrative being riddled with holes it’s an incredibly profitable scam.
Testing is doing far more harm to the NHS than covid patients. Is that by mistake or design?
Oh please, not the seatbelt argument again.
It’s incomparable to anything going on now and is actually a sensible measure for the merest inconvenience.
“Just wear the damned belt”
Calm down. It is about the rationale for the whole thing. Are you obliged to protect yourself?
It’s about lines crossed, passes sold.
Imagine for a moment an alternative world in which the proposal to regulate us for our own protection in our own vehicles had been defeated by a mass movement of popular and elite outrage, resisting such nanny state nonsense and insisting on clear prohibitions on laws coercing us for our own good.
Now imagine trying to impose facemasks etc on that society…
That’s why it’s good to stand firmly on moral principles.
“Same argument as with seatbelts. So it seems inevitable that “free” healthcare, inevitably leads to fascism.”
Indeed so.
Once everyone is forced to pay for everyone else’s healthcare, everyone’s health becomes the concern of the state, because the costs of ill health are collectivised.
The result, inevitably and necessarily, is the nanny state that we have seen growing around us over the past few decades, with seatbelt and smoking etc laws, culminating in the covid abomination.
The argument can be made that if the truth were known, the vaccinated will stretch and strain the NHS more than any other cohort. In time. Not every victim simply drops dead, (although plenty do).
Yes, it’s your duty to protect the NHS comrade (sarc).
In reality, the Tories are just deflecting to cover-up 10 years of their maladministration of health care to enrich their cronies.
From Thurber’s “Mr Preble gets rid of his wife”
Let’s go down in the cellar,” Mr. Preble said to his wife.
“What for?” she said, not looking up from her book.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “We never go down in the cellar any more. The way we used to.”
“We never did go down in the cellar that I remember,” said Mrs. Preble. “I could rest easy the balance of my life if I never went down in the cellar.” Mr. Preble was silent for several minutes.
“Supposing I said it meant a whole lot to me,” began Mr. Preble.
“What’s come over you?” his wife demanded. “It’s cold down there and there is absolutely nothing to do.”
For a fuller text: Mr. Preble Gets Rid of His Wife | The New Yorker
The wise are deeply suspicious at the way that the authorities are so desperate that all should be jabbed- so very, very insistent, so anxious, and so bullyingly determined.
And, an experimental jab that the manufacturers wanted a guaranteed non liablity clause for, from ALL governments
Its barmy, there is no case to answer. The ONLY argument is a 2nd or even 3rd order one, that the unvaxed stop public health services performing because of the extra strain they put on it. Even this is bunkum. The ‘vaccinations’ are no such things, they do not stop transmission or infection. Even any possible case for arguing the 2nd/3rd order benefits to ‘society are so short-lived as to be useless.
Its all arguments to support the unsupportable.
Freedoms are being trampled to benefit no-one but meglomaniacs.
Johnson blathers about knowing how wrecking (sob) his pointless lockdowns are blah blah, and then introduces ‘stealth shortages’ by clogging up the food processing industry and transport with pointless fake Covid tests to disruptively create bottlenecks and panic buying – does the porker think we are totally stupid – he is dissembling and devious to the core!
So is this the start of his massive deliberate ‘food panic’ and shortages offensive?
This will all never end – unless we stop complying!
Then there is mandatory vaccination threats – forcing people to take a vaccination against their will and better judgement – with products that we know have killed, at the very least, 1,800 and injured over 1,300,000 in this country and we now know damage our immune system, permanently – is a violation of the Nuremberg convention and a Crime Against Humanity with serious prison sentences on conviction.
Why would a Government, operating under ‘duty of care’ obligations still be trying to force these increasingly ineffective in their stated prime purpose, deeply and even fatally flawed products onto its citizens?
There is no kind answer to that.
We don’t even have to be non-compliant, all that’s required is don’t volunteer to take the tests. Just don’t participate.
Goodness me, you academics do waste time wrapping yourselves in the minutiae of a topic.
No, John Harris has no right to claim Mills would have backed mandatory vaccination, he cannot possibly know what Mills would have made of it all, although it doesn’t surprise me that he is arrogant enough to think so.
But let’s get back to basics once again. It’s a virus that seriously affects less than 1% of the population and, of that less than 1%, the vast majority are very old with underlying health conditions. In other words, the same demographic that sadly die during every flu season. Does Harris now propose mandatory vaccines against flu?
A rational person who truly believes in liberalism can clearly see that widespread draconian measures against such a discriminating virus is illogical, illiberal and very damaging to society.
Yup, liberals pfffft.
Is the cartoon a Tory election poster?
The problem with applying JS Mill to modern-day questions is that he lived and wrote in that happy time prior to August 1914, when as AJP Taylor noted, “a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman.”
We’re discussing problems that Mill could never have foreseen, and his thoughts are sadly no longer relevant.
Jeremy Chardy: I regret getting vaccinated, I have series of problems now.
Former world No. 25 Jeremy Chardy says he has a “series of problems” after taking the COVID-19 vaccine and his 2021 season is over. This summer, 34-year-old Chardy decided to get vaccinated and it didn’t work out well for him.
https://www.tennisworldusa.org/tennis/news/Tennis_Interviews/102836/jeremy-chardy-i-regret-getting-vaccinated-i-have-series-of-problems-now/
Casuistry, derived from and predicated by lies and malfeasance.
Virtue ethics get us where we want to be faster than utilitarianism, for the major flaw with the utilitarian approach that the governments claim to have used is that it relies upon predictable consequences. Here the consequences were unknowable, given the fact that they were never tested over the long term, (though the previous animal tests for MRNA vaccines in cats and other animals had been known to be disastrous.)
Of course the consequences may well have been known by a significant inner cohort. The essays and papers by both Stanley and Boris Johnson on the desirability of a much much lower population (eg. 10-15M in the UK) do not inspire confidence that they innocently failed to recognise that the consequences were unknowable, sadly.
Too many words. We don’t need philosophers for this one. We don’t even need any science let alone ‘the science’. Mandatory vaccinations are and have always been wrong. End of story.
That would have been the mainstream view 2 years ago. I can’t believe how far we’ve gone in such a short time. We used to have an Hippocratic Oath.
Sorry, but this is over-laboured. If the virus was actually dangerous – and an IFR of 0.096 clearly makes it not so – then maybe you could argue for Mill’s prevention of harm to others. But it’s not and never was, so the point is moot. The same thing goes for the ‘vaccines’ that are not vaccines.
I think we do ourselves a disservice with these overworked, ponderous pieces. A short, sharp para or two is much more likely to hit home. Sorry Will.
The problem with any collective decision making is that the decisions can be wrong; not just for certain individuals or certain groups, but for society as a whole, possibly even for the groups that are meant to benefit the most (the elderly in this case).
Individual decision making can also be wrong but is less likely to provide dramatically poor outcomes for society, as not all individuals will do the same wrong thing, some may take more time than others to way up their options and so on.
This so-called crisis has been the best advert for libertarianism that I have ever seen. It is not, to me, about abstract notions of liberty, that justify minimal government, but the fact that government is so often inimical to life, wealth, dignity and happiness.
Look this has already been, agreed on in advance it’s time we stopped engaging theoretical debates that justify fascist narratives. There are numerous treaties, declarations & laws that prohibit this totalitarian criminality. It’s time to stamp out pro vaccine marxists who are inciting hate & violence on others. Set an example No1. Issue an arrest warrant for the health secretary for Savage Jabit.
The Nuremberg Code (1947)
Permissible Medical Experiments1.The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision
The Law is clear on force, coercion & blackmail in regard to vaccines. The British Government are braking it! If you engage with these people justifying their criminality, you are complicit.
If your vaccine protects you, leave me alone.
If your vaccine doesn’t protect you, why did you take it?
Stop blaming a flawed treatment on those who refuse to take it.
But ‘harm’ is far more complex than that.
Moving away from the contentious subject of coronavirus vaccines — consider vaccination against chickenpox as an argument.
This vaccine definitely works. What’s more, by becoming vaccinated you also protect others against disease, such as the immunocompromised. Great — vaccination is a utilitarian good.
But what about vaccine side-effects? They’re rare, but then so are complications with chickenpox, with hospitalisations running at 1:3,000 or so.
But now the vaccines have been identified as significantly increasing the risk of shingles in older age, which can be very painful/distressing and comes with a risk of serious complication (eg, loss of sight). This occurs because immunity to the chickenpox virus needs regular exposure over the years for the immunity to remain effective — as vaccination has reduced childhood chickenpox the elderly have been denied this ‘top up’ of their immunity.
Ah, but those at risk of shingles can have the shingles vaccine, which reduces the problem…
What a merry-go-round — we need medicine to counteract the problems introduced by medicine for a problem that, while non-trivial, also wasn’t that serious in the first place (I’d be happy to accept a counter-argument here, but I’d note… Read more »
But this “we need a solution to a problem we created by solving the previous problem” is generally the story of civilization…
While the MSM condemns the use of ivermectin, the most populated state in India just declared they are officially COVID free after promoting widespread use of the safe, proven medicine. In addition to this, Ivermectin attaches to covid spikes and prevents them from binding to ACE2. Get your Ivermectin today while you still can! https://ivmpharmacy.com
> be required to pay the cost of his care”.
that’s it. hit them where it hurts them the most in their pockets.