Modal Realism is a Newcomb Problem
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Modal Realism is a Newcomb Problem Scott Hill1 Received: 24 June 2019 / Accepted: 20 October 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Some philosophers worry that if modal realism is true, you have no reason to prevent evils. For if you prevent an evil, you’ll have a counterpart somewhere that allows a similar evil. And if you refrain, your counterpart will end up preventing the relevant evil. Either way one evil is prevented and one is allowed. Your act makes no difference. I argue that this is mistaken. If modal realism is true, you are in a variant of Newcomb’s Problem. And if Lewis’ view about Newcomb’s Problem is true, then your act does make a difference and you should prevent the evil.
1 Introduction Lewis’ (1984) Modal realism is the view that for any way the world could be, there is a world that is that way; that each world exists as much, and in the same way, as the actual world; and each world is causally independent of each other world. Some philosophers worry that if modal realism is true, you have no reason to prevent evils. For if you prevent an evil, you’ll have a counterpart somewhere that allows a similar evil. And if you refrain, your counterpart will end up preventing the relevant evil. Either way one evil is prevented and one is allowed. So if modal realism is true, your act does not make a difference. But it does. So, modal realism is false. Call this ‘the Indifference Argument’. The premise that If modal realism is true, then your act does not make a difference is accepted by proponents and opponents of modal realism alike. As Adams (1974) puts it: I think that our very strong disapproval of the deliberate actualizing of evils similarly reflects a belief in the absolutely, and not just relatively, special status of the actual as such. Indeed, if we ask, “What is wrong with actualizing evils, since they will occur in some other possible world anyway if they don’t occur in this one?”, I doubt that the indexical theory can provide an answer which will be completely satisfying ethically. * Scott Hill [email protected] 1
Department of Philosophy, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309, USA
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As Lewis (1984) puts it: If modal realism makes a problem for anyone, it is for utilitarians…. The problem belongs only to utilitarians of an especially pure sort. Only if morality consists of maximizing the total good, absolutely regardless of where and to whom the good may accrue, can it lose its point because the sum total of good throughout the plurality of worlds is contingently fixed and depends not at all on what we do. As Heller (2003) puts it: No matter what I do, every ill that a person could suffer, someone will suffer, every evil that a person could do, someone will do, and every good that a person could do, someone will do. My actions can make no difference to the overall pattern of good and bad that happens to people. So there seems no reason for me to bother to do good rather than bad. As Fischer (2017) puts it: After all, however I act,
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