Essentially, my question is: How does determinism effect the concepts of harm and benefit?
Firstly, I am not sure yet if it does effect them. In all honesty, I hope that it does not; I think that harm and benefit are probably necessary for the existence of morality (personally, I think that they are all that is necessary) and as such their nonexistence would prove rather challenging to a relatively essential aspect of the world. However, if indeed determinism does invalidate harm and benefit, then of course it is better to be aware of this fact than to develop whole systems of morality based on false beliefs.
If determinism does invalidate harm and benefit, the only way I can imagine it doing so is that it deletes the possibility of any state of existence other than the existing one. If everything about the universe is determined, then things could not be otherwise than they are; thus, it might be impossible to legitimately compare an imagined (and impossible) state of being to an existent one. Can one, upon scraping one's knee, meaningfully say that one would be better off had one not done so? Or, given that the state of existence in which one did not scrape one's knee is and has always been impossible, is such a wish entirely meaningless?
I am still not sure about the answer to the above question. If one can meaningfully wish for things which cannot exist, then the concepts of harm and benefit are safe. If not, perhaps the idea of indeterminacy can preserve them.
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