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    Modal realism entails that there are no moral requirements. — Carmelics
    Home/Moral Responsibility
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    Modal realism entails that there are no moral requirements.

    Modality & PossibilityMoral Responsibility
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Under modal realism, every possible action you could perform is already being performed by your counterpart in some possible world.
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    • 2.If every possible action is already actualized somewhere, the directive 'you ought to do X' cannot mean 'bring X into existence across modal space'.
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    • 3.Moral requirements presuppose that the agent's choice makes a difference to what exists, a presupposition modal realism systematically undermines.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Lewis's modal realism treats all possible worlds as equally real and ontologically on a par, as argued in On the Plurality of Worlds (1986).
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    • 2.If the morally best outcomes and the morally worst outcomes are equally real across the plurality of worlds, no agent-neutral reason privileges actualizing one over another.
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    • 3.Frankfurt's and Wolf's accounts of moral responsibility both require that alternative possibilities carry genuine normative weight, a weight modal parity dissolves.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.According to modal realism, the way things are in the broadest possible sense is not a contingent matter.
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    • 2.If the way things are in the broadest possible sense is not contingent, we cannot change it.
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    • 3.If moral requirements flow from a requirement to improve the way things are in the broadest possible sense, and we cannot change that, then there are no moral requirements.
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    Topics

    Moral ResponsibilityModality & Possibility

    Connections

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    Consequentialism1 linked

    Related

    According to modal realism, the way things are in the broadest possible sense is...Frankfurt's and Wolf's accounts of moral responsibility both require that altern...If every possible action is already actualized somewhere, the directive 'you oug...If moral requirements flow from a requirement to improve the way things are in t...
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    If the morally best outcomes and the morally worst outcomes are equally real acr...If the way things are in the broadest possible sense is not contingent, we canno...Lewis's modal realism treats all possible worlds as equally real and ontological...Moral requirements presuppose that the agent's choice makes a difference to what...Under modal realism, every possible action you could perform is already being pe...

    Similar

    Substantive moral realism simply assumes the existence of objective st...90%Substantive moral realism fails to respond to the skeptical challenge ...88%Lewis's modal realism does not lead to the elimination of moral requir...88%By rejecting equal concern for all possible individuals, Lewis avoids ...85%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: david-lewis
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    Robert Adams (1974) argues that modal realism leads to surprising results in moral philosophy. The modal realist says that the way things are, in the broadest possible sense, is not a contingent matter, since we can’t change the nature of the pluriverse. Hence we cannot do anything about it. So if moral requirements flow from a requirement to improve the way things are, in this broadest possible sense, then there are no moral requirements. Lewis rejects the antecedent of this conditional as some
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit