There are many different kinds of misfortunes and harms, some physical, some psychological, some incident upon career, possessions and suchlike. Depending on type, some kinds of harm only exist if they are felt, whereas other kinds occur without the victim ever knowing it. The clearest examples of the first category include being subjected to physical or psychological pain, while clear examples of the second include being the unwitting victim of mistakes in medical or security records, and malicious gossip.
The first category is simply dealt with. It is not possible to be in pain without feeling pain; think of the absurdity of saying to someone: "You only think you have a headache; in fact you don't." Likewise it is true that someone has been harmed by someone else (say) deliberately attempting to embarrass him only if he actually feels embarrassed. If he does not respond by feeling embarrassed, he is not harmed by the effort to embarrass him.
More interesting is the kind of case in which mistakes on a person's security file result in his not being invited to interview for a job, or selected for promotion, or included in an advantageous arrangement of some kind, unbeknownst to him at the time and ever thereafter. This probably happened all the time in iron curtain countries, where files were kept on most people and contained all sorts of unreliable gossip. It doubtless also happens in our squeaky-clean and responsible democracies.
A mistaken entry on a medical record might constitute a harm—and certainly a misfortune—without the victim's knowledge, or indeed anyone's knowledge, in the particular sense that it is the inaccurate record that is or does the harm, even though a consequent harm in the form of an illness or drug reaction is recognised as such by the victim.
It might be thought that—to adapt Wittgenstein—whereof one is ignorant, thereby one is unharmed. This last example shows that is not so. This is because of the already-mentioned variety of respects in which one can suffer harm and misfortune that apply not only to the focal cases of one's felt experience but in one's estate and situation, the latter including what a suitably placed observer would recognise as positive possibilities for one's life, but which are prevented from actualising by something that the same observer would recognise as constituting a harm in the circumstances.
To substantiate this claim, one can point to the desirability of allowing citizens access to those files that are kept on them by employers or the authorities. Why? Because misinformation of any kind can do harm without the victim knowing it. If harm could only occur if it is known to occur, secret files would be, by definition, harmless.
Sent in by Rodney Codd, Faversham, Kent.
Send your philosophical queries and dilemmas to AC Grayling at question@prospect-magazine.co.uk
