What determines the degree to which some event harms a subject? According to the counterfactual comparative account, an event is harmful for a subject to the extent that she would have been overall better off if it had not occurred. Unlike the causation based account, this view nicely accounts for deprivational harms, including the harm of death, and for cases in which events constitute a harm rather than causing it. However, I argue, it ultimately fails, since not every intrinsically bad state that is counterfactually dependent on an event contributes to its degree of harm. So while the causation based account is too restrictive, the counterfactual comparative view is not restrictive enough. In light of this, I suggest an alternative, explanation based account of overall harm, according to which the degree to which some event is harmful for a subject is determined by the degree to which (crudely) the states explained by it are overall more intrinsically bad than intrinsically good for her.

什么决定了某些事件对主体的伤害程度？根据反事实比较说明，如果某事件没有发生，她整体上会过得更好，那么该事件对受试者是有害的。与基于因果关系的解释不同，这种观点很好地解释了剥夺性伤害，包括死亡的伤害，以及事件构成伤害而不是造成伤害的情况。然而，我认为，它最终会失败，因为并非每一个反事实依赖于事件的本质上不好的状态都会导致其危害程度。因此，虽然基于因果关系的解释过于局限，但反事实比较观点的局限性还不够。鉴于此，我建议对整体危害进行另一种解释性说明，