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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Perceiving Imperceptible Harms (With Other Thoughts On Transitivity, Cumulative Effects, And Consequentialism), Donald H. Regan
Perceiving Imperceptible Harms (With Other Thoughts On Transitivity, Cumulative Effects, And Consequentialism), Donald H. Regan
Book Chapters
Many writers believe there can be cases which satisfy the following description: starting from an initial state of affairs, it is possible to make a series of changes, none of which alters the value of the state of affairs in any way, but such that the final state of affairs that results from the series of changes is worse than the initial state of affairs. I shall call the claim that there can be such cases the "ex nihilo" claim, since in a sense it asserts that the bad effects of the complete series of changes arise ex nihilo. Proponents …