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Bigoted Insults, Harm, and the Intentional Infliction of Pain: A Reply to Bell

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2025

Dale E. Miller Open the ORCID record for Dale E. Miller [Opens in a new window]
Dale E. Miller*
Affiliation:
Philosophy and Religious Studies, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, USA
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Email: demiller@odu.edu
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Abstract

Melina Constantine Bell (2021) argues that J. S. Mill's harm principle permits society to coercively interfere with the use of bigoted insults, since these insults are harmful on “a more expansive, modern, conception of harm.” According to Bell, these insults are harmful in virtue of their contributing to detrimental objective states like health problems. I argue that people with illiberal dispositions might have intense and sustained negative subjective reactions to behavior that the harm principle ought to protect, reactions intense enough to affect their health or other objective interests. Bell's way of thinking about harm therefore has illiberal implications. Yet I agree with her that bigoted insults should be regarded as harmful. I therefore propose an alternative way of understanding harm according to which subjective pain is a harm when it is intentionally caused.

Keywords

J. S. Millharm principleharmfree speechinsultshate speech

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Utilitas , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , June 2025 , pp. 163 - 170
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press

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