International Phenomenological Society

Injury, Harm, Damage, Pain, Etc. Author(s): Ramchandra Gandhi Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Dec., 1973), pp. 266-269 Published by: International Phenomenological Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2106694 . Accessed: 23/08/2013 13:04
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DISCUSSION INJURY, HARM, DAMAGE, PAIN, ETC. I hope in this note to clarifya little the nexus of related notions expressed by the group of words which form the title of this note: Injury, Harm, Damage, Pain, etc. But before I can say anythingat all about these notions I would like to try to establish the following thesis: that no human being can self-consciouslyregard himself as not being valuable in any sense whatever, that it would be self-contradictoryto assert the proposition "I am not valuable in any senses whatever." I shall present two arguments in support of the above thesis and then show that, given the truthof this thesis, the notions of injury, harm, damage, etc., become immediately clarified. Suppose you told me that you did not regard yourself as being valuable in any sense whatever. Suppose now that I asked you the followingquestion in response to your unqualifiedly self-denigrating statement: "Do you regard yourself,as the issuer of the statement 'I am not valuable in any sense whatever,'as being valuable in some sense or other?" Suppose you replied "No!" I think if you did that, I could argue that in that case you had no right to attach any importance to your unqualifiedly self-denigrating statement, not even enough importance to enable you to regard it as being true. The notion of somebody having the right to regard a statement of his as being true and the notion of his attaching some, as opposed to no, importance to the statement in question are logically connected notions. It would be self-contradictory to assert "I regard the statement that p as being a true statement,although I attach absolutely no importance to the statement that p." I shall ward off a possible objection at this point. Somebody might,it could be argued, assert a tautology and quite properly also assert, even in the same breath, that he attached absolutely no importance to the tautology he asserted. In reply to this objection I shall simply say that it is a misuse of language to call a tautology an assertion. An assertion must at least intend to be informative, unlike a tautology.Now if you attach some importance to your unqualifiedly self-denigrating statement 266

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and you must if you are going to regard it as being true - a bit of this importance has logically got to rub off onto the notion of yourself as the issuer of your statement. So you cannot, without stultifyingyourself,tell me that you do not value yourself in any sense whatever, attach any importance whatever to yourself. The above argument may not satisfy somebody who could conceivably take the view that even if one cannot make an unqualifiedly self-denigrating statement,one could nevertheless think an unqualifiedlyself-denigrating thought.I want to argue that even this is impossible. This is because such a thoughtmust involve the employmentby the thinkerof the symbol "I." Now the account of the nature of the symbol "I" which I find satisfactoryis the following: In thinkingthe complex thoughtsymbolized by the expression "I," I imagine myself being cast in the role of an audience by an imagined speaker. This is what makes thinkingpossible - the imaginativecasting of oneself in the role of a "listener,"i.e., in the role of one who weighs,considers, etc., the importance or truthof utterances: i.e., the role of a thinker. Now it can be argued that to be cast in the role of an audience by somebody is to be the recipient of what must be regarded as a minimally caring attitude. No addressing, no communication, can take place if speakers regarded their would-be hearers merely as "targets" of their interactionistmoves. Communicative attention has to be solicited, invited,it cannot be simply elicited in the manner of an effectof a causal action. And solicitation,invitation,etc., must be minimallycaring activities. Thus to imagine oneself as being cast in the role of an audience must involve imagining oneself being the recipient of a minimallycaring attention. It would be self-contradictoryto tryto deny this,because such a a denial too would involve the thinkingof the complex thoughtsymbolized by the expression "." So I cannot thinkof myselfin a way which does not involve thinkingin the sense of imagining- that a minimal value was being attached to myself.And how can I, in thinking,logically necessarily believe that a minimal value was being attached to myself and at the same time think that I was not valuable in any sense whatever? Surely I must regard myselfas being valuable in the sense of being minimally valuable to those I imagine to be addressing me! If my arguments above have been sound, then to be a self-conscious human being must be to regard oneself as being valuable in some sense or other. And to regard oneself as being valuable is to regard oneself as being vulnerable to anythingwhich sought to take away whatever value one regarded oneself as possessing. This connection can be seen more easily by reflectingupon the connection between the notions of "regarding onself as valuable in some sense

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RESEARCH AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY

or other" and "regarding oneself as being precious in some sense or other."The concepts of injury,harm,damage, pain (of requisite intensity), etc., are concepts which self-conscioushuman beings must logically necessarily possess, because it is the job of these concepts to pick out states of affairs which human beings, regarding themselves as being valuable in some sense or other, must find unacceptable. I am not suggestingthat there must be a unique set of states of affairs which must be picked out by the concepts of injury, harm, etc. If my arguments have been sound, then there must always be some states of affairs (actual or possible) which human being would findunacceptable (bad, unwelcome,etc.). The concepts of injury,etc., are open-ended concepts which pick out these states of affairs. Of course there are subtle and important distinctions between injury, harm, damage, pain, etc. My purpose in this note is not, however, to explore these distinctions,but to show the necessary applicability of notions such as the above ones to human life. Concentratingon the notion of injury, I would like to conclude this note by considering the followingset of questions: (a) Why do injury upon B was we say, when we do say, that A's act of inflicting a bad action? (b) Why do we say, when we do say, that A's act of inflictinginjury upon B was not a bad action? Now the answer to question (a) above cannot be that we discover empirically that A's act of inflictinginjury upon B was a bad action. The notion of "a bad action" is part of the notion of "inflictinginjury upon somebody." But it does hot follow from this that we can invoke this logical connection and condemn every act of inflicting injury upon somebody as a bad action. This sounds odd on the face of it, but a consideration of question (b) above should indispel this sense of oddity. When we say that A's act of inflicting that A's we injurya bad imply always B was action, not upon jury act cannot be considered in isolation, that it is integrallya inflicting part of some wider action - such as, for example, a self-defensive action - which is admitted to be acceptable, i.e., not bad, good, etc. Finally, before really concluding, a few words again about the connectionbetween the notion of "regardingoneself as valuable" and the notion of "regardingoneself as vulnerable." A psychotic,someone the structureof whose self-consciousnesshas sufferedsome kind of fracture,would not, perhaps, be in a position to regard himself as being valuable in any sense whatever. But for this very reason he would not be in a position to regard himself as being vulnerable to injury, etc. Does not this fact throw light on the psychotic's inadeactions? Take now not a psychoticbut a morally quate self-denfensive good man. (I am not of course implyingthat a psychoticis a morally

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DELHI

bad man). I think it is a mark of moral goodness in a man that he attaches less value to himself than others attach to him. Now for this very reason our morally good man would regard himself as being less vulnerable to thingslike injury,harm, etc., than those who are not morally as good men as he is. He would shrug off all sorts of - to us unacceptable - things which happened to him as "not really" being injuries, etc., something lesser men would find much harder to do. These facts of life support my contention,I think,that regarding oneself as being valuable involves regarding oneself as being vulnerable. And that it is this fact which fixes the logical area of operation of such notions as injury, harm, damage, pain (of requisite intensity),etc. RAMCHANDRA GANDHI.
UNIVERSITY.

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