If we have an interactionist definition of harm, preferably, one which was prealably deliberated with the community, we have no trouble applying the harm principle. — Godefroy
What are you saying? That the driver was a poor driver anyway, and smoking weed was only the final straw in their driving ineptitude?Well smoking weed wouldn't be what caused the car accident and wheelchair harm. Pretty obviously it was something to do with the driving, possibly from the weed but not necessarily. — DingoJones
People who smoke pot hurt themselves, so they are the victims, so smoking pot isn't "a victimless crime".Running people over isn’t a victimless crime, but smoking pot is.
I'm critical of all substances and activities that in any way diminish a person's ability to drive safely.Also, people critical of smoking pot or its legalisation have to be critical of drinking alcohol or its legalisation first if they want to be taken seriously.
What are you saying? That the driver was a poor driver anyway, and smoking weed was only the final straw in their driving ineptitude? — baker
People who smoke pot hurt themselves, so they are the victims, so smoking pot isn't "a victimless crime". — baker
I'm critical of all substances and activities that in any way diminish a person's ability to drive safely. — baker
Under this interactionist definition of harm, could we have some kind of coherent and unified way of explaining what all types of harmful actions have in common? — TheHedoMinimalist
I think some communities, especially more religious ones, may conceptualize harm as something that could be impersonal and victimless. — TheHedoMinimalist
For example, they might say that smoking weed causes harm because it upsets God or because it violates the sanctity of the community even if done completely privately. — TheHedoMinimalist
We don’t allow homosexuality, we’re just saying we’re not going to punish. We will not send the police to the bedrooms to see what is going on between consenting adults in private. […] We are taking the idea of sin out of the Criminal Code. — Pierre E. Trudeau
It is inconceivable that we so arbitrarily lock up an individual for acts which do not violate public decency since they are committed privately or against the integrity of young people, since they were committed between consenting adults. — Thérèse Casgrain
Thus said, I hardly see how these matters actually affect our agreement over the the harm principle. We can agree with the harm principle without agreeing to a common theory of the significance of harm. We can agree that 1) an action which only hurts me 2) jand does not impact someone else 3) in a significant manner in order to constitute it as harm, should not be criminalized. We can agree on the principle (albeit a very reinterpreted one) without agreeing with what precisely is a significant harm comprised in condition 3. Therefore, the harm principle isn’t in any way vague about what conditions are relevant for prohibition, but it is quite harder for it the be specific about what it prohibits. — Godefroy
If you end up in a wheelchair after being run over by a pot smoking driver, we can then have a discussion about the relevance of "significant enough" probabilities.And that's IF you could show that weed affects driving with significant diminished safety which the data doesnt indicate. — DingoJones
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