Somewhat long but worthwhile wall ahead.

Okay, so I'm having some trouble wrapping my head around a thought experiment. It's a follow-on from the thought experiment posed by Thomas Nagel on death. The original is pretty straightforward, and goes something like this:

Imagine an intelligent man who receives a brain injury that reduces his mental abilities to that of an infant. He's unaware  of his impairment and is a perfectly happy man-child.

The implication being that this impairment constitutes a severe harm to the man by depriving him of a range of experiences, like reading poetry and listening to music etc. I think this is a deeply flawed argument, but there you have it.

Okay, so here's the follow-up:

Imagine you develop a cure for this man's mental impairment. Imagine it is cheap to make and easy to administer. Restoring this man's mental faculties would be as simple as putting a vitamin tablet in his food. Would you then be morally obligated to give it to him? And would refusing to do so be harming him?

So the difference here being the prevention of experiences, rather than the mere deprivation of them (although I don't think Nagel's exercise actually illustrated a deprivation). I'm inclined to think that there's no real difference, assuming you aren't aware of what you're missing in either case. So it can't be harmful. But on the other hand, I dunno, it just doesn't sit right. I mean, you are missing out on a better experience than you're having, and obviously being aware of that makes it worse, but is that really all you need to be harmed? Isn't ignorantly missing out on a good still worse than getting it?

Someone throw me a bone here. Feel free to give your own opinion on the thought experiment, too.

I value the truth over basically everything else. I don't care how horrible the truth is. If it were me, I would much appreciate having my faculties restored. And I think if you're a self-respecting individual, you would, too.

Yeah, but that's different from whether you're actually harmed from not receiving the cure.

The experiment is particularly pertinent to death, too. I don't think death is harmful in itself, but if missing out on good experiences is a harm, then perhaps death is a harm too... even if you aren't aware of what you're missing.

Yeah I would feel obligated to give it to him because I have to assume anyone would prefer to be back to normal as well as the friends and family of the individual.

For sake of the experiment, remove the wishes of the family. The man-baby is perfectly content being a man-baby. Is there any real obligation to give him something for which he has no desire?

Also note that those restored mental faculties would also enable him to suffer in more ways as well.

Why not give it to him? I wish there was some kind of magic cure for my ADD

I don't see a particularly compelling reason to leave him mentally impaired.

I don't see a particularly compelling reason to leave him mentally impaired.

It's not so much whether there's a good reason, but rather whether doing so would be harming him.

It's supposed to make the case for death being a harm, even though you can't be aware of being dead.

if missing out on good experiences is a harm, then perhaps death is a harm too... even if you aren't aware of what you're missing.

Missing out on good experiences is definitely not a harm. I've never been to Disney World. I'm sure it's a great time, but I don't really feel any inner turmoil for never having been there. If I let that kind of stuff harm me, I would've gone fucking insane. I don't think it's because we're "numb" to it, either--more that, we don't know what we're missing, and we're smart enough to realize that the universe doesn't revolve around us, to help us understand the fact that life is comprised of banal, quotidian bullshit most of the time. And besides--it's this stagnation that helps us appreciate the "good times", as it were. There is no free pleasure.

I'm just saying, it doesn't quite work as a functional definition of harm, because harm tends to be one of those things that everyone should universally agree on. What pain is is really NOT up for interpretation.

The manchild is a societal burden and should have his condition rectified if possible.

I'd rather be happy than smart any day.