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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Counterfactuals cannot adequately capture the concept of circumstantial luck

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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Each improvement to the counterfactual schema for circumstantial luck generates a new apparent counterexample
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    • 2.The iterative failure of successive counterfactual refinements suggests a systematic inadequacy rather than a fixable defect
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Circumstantial luck is constitutively indexed to the agent's actual situation, making any non-actual world comparison semantically misaligned with what luck picks out.
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    • 2.Lewis's possible worlds semantics selects counterfactual worlds by similarity metrics that presuppose a stable agent-type, but circumstantial luck is precisely what destabilizes that type across worlds.
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    • 3.Moral luck theorists like Nagel treat circumstances as partially constitutive of the moral situation itself, not merely as inputs to a pre-fixed deliberative structure that counterfactuals could hold constant.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Circumstantial luck concerns the normative significance of unchosen contexts, but counterfactual analysis dissolves context by abstracting away the very particularity that makes those circumstances morally salient.
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    • 2.Williams's critique of moral theory shows that ethical concepts resist reduction to context-neutral conditionals because moral weight is borne by irreducibly particular facts about what actually happened to a specific person.
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