Mill's harm principle states that everything that causes harm should be banned.

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The statement to evaluate is: 'Mill's harm principle states that everything that causes harm should be banned.'

Option 1: True. This would claim that Mill argued for broad bans on actions that cause harm. In fact, Mill’s harm principle does not advocate banning all harmful actions indiscriminately. Instead, it posits that the only legitimate use of political or legal power against an individual should be to prevent harm to others. Actions that primarily affect the individual performing them, what Mill terms 'self-regarding' actions, are typically left unconstrained.

Option 2: False. This aligns with Mill’s position that the appropriate scope of interference is limited to preventing harm to others. It allows for a wide latitude of individual liberty in self-regarding matters, as long as those actions do not harm others. The core idea is ‘the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others’.

Analyzing why the first option is inaccurate: if one claimed that all harms must be banned, that would imply interventions for every situation where someone could potentially be harmed, including self-harm or hypothetical harms to others that may be indirect or vague. Mill’s framework, however, draws a distinction between actions that harm others and actions that merely affect the individual, which should lie beyond permissible government or social sanction according to his view.

Analyzing why the second option is accurate: the harm principle emphasizes externalities and the prevention of harm to others as the justification for coercion or regulation. It accepts significant personal liberty in matters that only involve the individual’s own good or preferences, making the blanket claim in the statement overly broad and misrepresentative of Mill’s theory.

In sum, the claim as written overstates the scope of permissible bans and does not capture Mill’s emphasis on harms to others rather than self-regarding actions.

PHI 007Y A01 WQ 2025 Week 6 Quiz

Mill's harm principle states that everything that causes harm should be banned.

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