Unfelt Harm

Abstract

This chapter provides an extensive defense of the first premise of the book’s central argument: the claim that it is possible for an act to wrongfully harm a person while they are alive even if the act has no effect on the person’s conscious experiences. The chapter begins by offering a series of thought experiments designed to motivate this claim, including a version of Nozick’s famous experience machine. It then identifies a series of objections that can be raised against the use of such thought experiments in support of this claim and argues that all of them can be successfully overcome.