A Working Account of the Right Against Bodily Interference

Abstract In this chapter, Douglas offers a schematic, tentative, incomplete, and metaphysically ecumenical working account of bodily interference, and of the right against it. The account is intended to capture at least a part of the right against bodily interference that is present in common-sense morality. On Douglas’ account, interfering with a person’s body consists in touching their body, or altering their bodily states via a mediating process, in the person, that is insensitive to the reasons that bear on the alteration. And the interference will infringe the right against bodily interference when it is significant, performed on a person who possesses the right and has not waived or forfeited in relation to the interference in question, and performed by what Douglas calls a ‘well-situated moral agent’. Importantly, on this account of the right, it is possible for one person to infringe another’s right against bodily interference without imposing net harm, acting on bad motives, or intending the interference. The account of the right against bodily interference developed in this chapter serves as a template for Douglas’ initial working account of the right against mental interference, developed in Chapter 3.