Lot of unpacking to do first and foremost as far as your OP.

Passive activities or casual hobbies that degenerate or increase in an observable way factors that detriment health. Opposed to active self harm. Which usually involves others just saying.

Not sure "where you be" per se but unless you live in a society where neighbors toss their dead into the woods to be eaten by wolves... someone pays for it. One way or the other.

At what point does preference become self harm? Some things inflict more self harm than others, how do you determine what amount is ok or not?
Also, ate you talking ethically permissible self harm, or using some other goal/metric.

Passive activities or casual hobbies that degenerate or increase in an observable way factors that detriment health. Opposed to active self harm. Which usually involves others just saying. — Outlander

I purposely structured my OP to provide a scenario where I didn't harm anyone else.

At what point does preference become self harm? Some things inflict more self harm than others, how do you determine what amount is ok or not? — DingoJones

It's all hypothetical in which I've yet to determine whether self-harm is wrong in the first place. One thing at a time.

Also, ate you talking ethically permissible self harm, or using some other goal/metric. — DingoJones

It could be ethical, or existential. I'm thinking of Camus's reason why we shouldn't commit suicide.

It's all hypothetical in which I've yet to determine whether self-harm is wrong in the first place. One thing at a time. — Wheatley

Ok, well perhaps a distinction between different types of self harm would be helpful? Some things are more pure self harm, like stabbing yourself in the eye, while other things have a clear trade-off like eating junk food or going to the beach and suffering harm from the sun. You trade harm for pleasure of experience.
Would that kind of cost/benefit analysis be useful forvwhst yiu have in mind?

Ok, well perhaps a distinction between different types of self harm would be helpful? Some things are more pure self harm, like stabbing yourself in the eye, while other things have a clear trade-off like eating junk food or going to the beach and suffering harm from the sun. You trade harm for pleasure of experience. — DingoJones

I don't think you need a philosophical argument why you shouldn't stab yourself in the eye. It's just plain stupid. I'm talking about cases where you get something out of it. I mentioned in the OP, living a bohemian lifestyle, which might include smoking and gambling.

Kantian - arguably a violation of one's imperfect duty to develop one's talents (or something similar)

Utilitarian - taking actions which fail to generate the most utility. Depending on the case, I imagine that a longer, healthier lifespan would facilitate doing more good.

But I am doubtful of that there are 'categorical imperatives' of either kind. Only perfectly ordinary hypothetical imperatives of the form 'if you value X, you ought to do Y'.

:ok:

So basically where you decide to believe the idea maybe you don't know what you're doing or basically that yes doing things purported to cause harm do in fact cause harm or equally yes assuming you wish to drive across a stable bridge you do what supports it and avoid what doesn't. Synonyms for common sense are infinite I suppose.

Alright, then I dont think you are talking about something that can be said to be ethically wrong. Those are preferences, and a matter if risk managment not morality/ethics.

If I am not hurting anyone else, only shortening my life span, I ought to be able to do that. Yet, I feel that it is wrong for me to make decisions that cause self-harm. — Wheatley

Explain why you "feel" a potentially life-shortening "bohemian lifestyle" is one of those "decisions that cause self-harm"? After all, there are still plenty of elderly beatniks & hippies around. Sounds more like a question of risk management rather than ethics like DingoJones said. And consider: is pursuing a military career itself - also potentially life-shortening - an ethical problem? I don't think so.

When you gotta go, you gotta go. If there is choice around that, then that is your choice.

Explain why you "feel" a potentially life-shortening "bohemian lifestyle" is one of those "decisions that cause self-harm"? After all, there are still plenty of elderly beatniks & hippies around — 180 Proof

I was thinking of chess player Mikhail Tal when I wrote that. His wiki page states that he lived a bohemian lifestyle and that he died relatively young.

Sounds more like a question of risk management rather than ethics like DingoJones said. And consider: is pursuing military career itself - also potentially life-shortening - an ethical problem? I don't think so. — 180 Proof

I'm not sure if I agree with this opinion.

So explain why you "feel" this re: OP.

I don't think it is necessary to explain further. I already awarded the answer to @Welkin Rogue, so it's all moot now.

Self-harm is definitely immoral. In fact, it is as immoral as harming others. Why? Well, why should we bother to be moral at all? If we assume for the sake of argument that life is meaningless, and there is no reason why we are here, it would still be contradictory to hurt oneself. If there is no meaning outside there is still meaning inside a thing. Any entity or organism has a purpose within itself and that is to uphold itself. The purpose of a machine is to run well and an animal organism works to try to stay healthy. What is right is according to the nature of a thing even if there were no purpose outside it.

Self-harm is a contradiction since nothing can possibly want to hurt itself. It is only possible to really want what one thinks is good for oneself. If you argue that it is wrong to hurt others because it goes against their will, the same holds true for hurting yourself because it is actually against your own will. If you think you want to hurt yourself, you are simply mistaken about your own will.

The basis of Aristotelean virtue ethics is to be in harmony with one’s nature, and obviously by hurting oneself, one destroys this harmony.

It's interesting that the question presupposes the immorality of hurting others, without any justification. Why the double standard?

Obviously the immorality of self-harm is one that requires an individual's thought. The immorality of harming others is a belief that is forced on you by others. Most people who think it is immoral to hurt others have no working definition of morality... it's simply whatever reduces negative attention towards them.

This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.

Actually, definitely a violation of perfect duty to self. — tim wood

Yeah that's another arguable reading. Using the universalisation maxim of the categorical imperative, you could argue that self-harm fails the contradiction in conception test in just the same way that suicide does: the principle that sustains life is being used to oppose it. In neither case do I find the argument compelling, however. Do I necessarily kill myself out of self-love? Do I necessarily harm myself out of self-love or something similar? If not, then it may be perfectly coherent to conceive of a world in which everyone follows a maxim of self-harm.

To answer this question in a way that makes sense of our unwillingness to accept suicide despite it being justifiable we need to view the issue from two perspectives - the individual's and society's.

Suicide is completely justifiable if opted for because of circumstances that are both intolerable and irremdiable e.g. severe pain of cancer. There are other conditions that fit the description "intolerable and irremediable" and it isn't hard to imagine scenarios that leave only one option - death/suicide - as the most rational.

Moral theories too seem to offer little resistance to suicide as justified in certain situations. In other words, no moral codes are violated in taking one's own life, in fact some moral theories may even recommend suicide e.g. utilitarianism suggests a benefit from suicide if done because of extreme suffering and so makes suicide a favorable act.

This from the individual's standpoint.

Coming to society, it's quite clear that just like many employees choosing to leave an organization indicates that something's wrong with that organization, high suicide rates point to issues with the environment in which it occurs. What kind of society/environment has that much of what I called "intolerable and irremdiable" that people are ending their own lives in signficant numbers? On the flipside, what kind of people would consider what is just minor deviations from the normal "intolerable and irremediable"?

This from society's side.

Clearly, suicide is not always a problem of those who take their own lives for there are perfectly good reasons to do it. However, what kind of society is it that generates, and sustains the right conditions to make people encounter what to them are "intolerable and irremediable"?

Suicide is, in this sense, a social disorder.

A very fine, very inventive player.

Yet, I feel that it is wrong for me to make decisions that cause self-harm.

I wonder if anyone knows of a philosophical position that suggests self-harm is wrong? — Wheatley

Well, you're clearly not referring to suicide, so arguments that suicide is immoral clearly are inapplicable. You seem to be referring to living in a not very healthy way. I'm not sure, though, just what you mean by "bohemian" as that normally is used to describe someone socially unconventional and, in the old days, a beatnik. But I assume you're not referring to wearing a beret, smoking, playing bongos and hanging out in coffee houses or jazz clubs listening to Charlie Parker or reading Allen Ginsburg and such.

Provided no one else is harmed, though, I think it would be difficult to maintain it's wrong to be unhealthy.

Ok. I won't bother you again. :shade:

I don't see good reasons against "self harm" in this sense, if it strikes an accord with you and does no harm to others.

The only avenue of attack I see against it is the question: "Why are you only yours?", and that way lies madness, jackboots and Philosophy in the Bedroom.

Ok. I won't bother you again. :shade: — 180 Proof

As you wish.

:up:

self harm IS a coping mechanism for people that do it. So you can argue that they do want it. It is entirely possible to want to hurt yourself because it serves as a good distraction. People self harm because it takes their attention away from an immense emotional pain and replaces it with a relatively mild one (not that self harm isn’t painful). We have many similar “distracting” coping mechanisms like laughter when we’re nervous or afraid.

And how does “it is contradictory to hurt yourself” follow from “there is no meaning”? Where is the contradiction? How are those two even related?

At a given moment people may seemingly want to hurt themselves, and since people do it all the time, that appears to be good evidence for what they wish. But no, all of us do stupid things that we later regret, realizing that we didn’t actually want it. A wish must be considered in a broader perspective. You may feel you want to drink a lot, but then you’ll be badly hung over, and you don’t want that. Still looking back at a last weekend, you may think that the fun you had outweighed your hang-over – it’s debatable. However, when it comes to self-harm that had no perceivable benefits, it’s easy to conclude that the person didn’t really want it beyond the moment of insanity. Cutting off your fingers because you are angry with the world may seem a good idea to a disturbed mind when it happens, but if he ever regained his reason he would understand that he had acted contrary to his own wish.
Now, I may concede that your objection has some merit, only I wouldn’t consider it a harm if it’s a temporary alleviation with no side effects. I have myself combated tooth ache by inflicting some other distracting pain, and it actually felt good in a way. But for that reason and because the contrary pain soon disappeared, it can’t really be counted as self-harm.
The logical conclusion remains: No one can want what is bad for themselves.

If you think you have an obligation to something outside of yourself, to God or society, and also if you think your life has an external meaning, that may provide you with a reason why it would be bad for you to hurt yourself. But then you’d first have to argue for that meaning and obligation and that’s ultimately a matter of belief. However, if we restrict the argument to internal reasons, we avoid that difficulty. A self cannot want to harm itself since it contradicts what it means to be a self.

“ But for that reason and because the contrary pain soon disappeared, it can’t really be counted as self-harm.”

When someone self harms they are doing exactly what you did for your tooth ache. When they self harm the contrary pain (emotional) disappears. For them it is more harmful to sit with their emotions than to cut themselves. The benefit is avoiding a greater pain.

“Moments of insanity” hardly exist. They are not the reason people self harm. If they were self harm would be spontaneous and random not habitual as it almost always is. When people self harm they are doing so precisely because they don’t want what is harmful for them (the emotional pain) and choose a lesser harm.

If your toothache thing doesn’t count as self harm then most self harm wouldn’t count as self harm by your definitions.

There’s the quick utilitarian response: self harm is wrong if the pain you cause exceeds the benefit. So, even if you don’t care about the harm to yourself, if your family or friends are driven to great pain by your lifestyle that exceeds the joy you receive from living your autonomous life style then you are doing wrong. So, we can imagine the pain caused to the heroin addict ‘s parents by constant worry could lead to its condemnation.

BUT, There’s a more interesting Kantian style answer though. This is from David Brink “ The self is not to be identified with any desire or any series or set of desires; moral personality consists in the ability to subject appetites and desires to a process of deliberative endorsement and to form new desires as the result of such deliberations. So the self essentially includes deliberative capacities, and if responsible action expresses the self, it must exercise these deliberative capacities. ... The proper aim of deliberation is a life of activities that embody rational or deliberative control of thought and action.”
I think what he’s trying to say here is that living according to your base desires, let’s say drinking beer all day, or whatnot is not a true exercise of your rational capabilities. Therefore, it violates your very nature as a rational human being. The exercise of morality is tied up in being a rational being who deliberates. If you choose to not deliberate and just give in to your quickest desires, you are morally wrong because you are violating your very rational, moral nature that qualifies you as an adult human.

That said, a bohemian can live a very fulfilling life dedicated to art and creativity. Not every bohemian is necessarily Charles Burkowski on a weekend bender.