Harm and Benefit

Harm and benefit are crucial to our everyday decisions about what to do, and yet their nature and significance is obscure. In this dissertation, I identify what we want from an account of harm and benefit, and I defend a new account on the grounds that it gives us what we want. Along the way, I review and refine existing challenges of preemption and overdetermination, and I develop new challenges regarding difference-making and indeterminacy. I argue that these challenges arise from failing to distinguish between relevant alternatives, and this diagnosis leads me to search for an account that distinguishes between relevant alternatives. What ultimately emerges is a unified perspective on the nature and significance of harm and benefit