Proximity Beats Proportions in Modal Accounts of Luck

Proximity Beats Proportions in Modal Accounts of LuckIn recent debates about the nature of luck, many philosophers defend a modal condition, according to which an event E is lucky for S only if E is modally fragile.However, there are two competing accounts of how this condition should be filled out: (1) proportion accounts focus on whether E fails to occur in a suitable proportion of possible worlds, whereas (2) proximity accounts focus on whether E fails to occur in a suitably proximate possible world.In this article I argue against proportion accounts and in favor of proximity accounts.Section 1 consists of a brief literature review.Section 2 explains how the two accounts differ: it is a formal feature of proximity accounts, but not of proportion accounts, that they are symmetric.In section 3, I set out my argument for proximity accounts.I begin by noting that, despite the formal difference explicated in section 2, proximity and proportion accounts are similarly situated in regard to many prominent issues in the luck literature: both can overcome Latus' famous sunrise objection, and both fall prey to Lackey's famous whim objection.Next, I argue that Hill's recent and influential reductio of proportion accounts does not withstand critical scrutiny.I maintain, instead, that the reason to reject proportion accounts, and the reason to affirm proximity accounts, is that, because proportion accounts, unlike proximity accounts, are asymmetric, they are scuttled by the Russian roulette problem (surviving Russian roulette is a paradigmatic instance of luck even though the chances of survival are higher than not).In section 4, I turn to objections to proximity accounts.I confront an objection from Coffman, an objection from Hill, and an objection inspired from McKinnon.I maintain that proximity accounts can overcome all of these objections

Luck · Modal · Modal logic · Normal modal logic · Presupposition · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Free Will and Agency · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment

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