Proximity Beats Proportions in Modal Accounts of Luck

International Journal of Philosophical Studies 33 (3):284-307 (2025)
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Abstract

In 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.

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Samuel J. M. Kahn
Indiana University Indianapolis

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References found in this work

Counterfactuals.David Lewis - 1973 - Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.
Epistemic Luck.Duncan Pritchard - 2007 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
Counterfactuals.David Lewis - 1973 - Foundations of Language 13 (1):145-151.
Epistemic Luck.Duncan Pritchard - 2005 - Oxford, GB: Clarendon Press.

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