is no particularly morally important relationship—and merely being spatiotemporally connected is very low on the scale of moral importance—it should not matter or at least matter much. On Lewis’s view, however, my reason to help strangers is only the agent-centered reason to be the cause of goods, because the consequences are always the same. But since the reason to be the cause of goods has extremely low weight, it follows that EMR radically lowers the weight of reasons to help strangers. If we accept a more traditional assessment of the weight of these reasons, we shall have to reject EMR. Instead of cataloguing further problems entailed by EMR, I shall give what I take to be one of the deepest criticisms, which I believe is due to van Inwagen. The criticism is simply that the existence of infinitely many maximally spatiotemporally interconnected aggregates has nothing to do with modality. If we found out that reality contains infinitely many maximally spatiotemporally interconnected aggregates, we would simply have learned that the actual world is richer than we thought—that it contains all of these island universes—rather than learning something about the space of possibilities. Here is a variant on the objection. Suppose that there exist infinitely many maximally spatiotemporally interconnected aggregates, and some of them contain golden mountains but none contains unicorns[3]. It would follow that golden mountains are possible, simply because what is actual is also possible, but surely it would not follow from this fact that unicorns are impossible. And if there were only one spatiotemporally interconnected aggregate, namely ours, it would not follow that modal fatalism is true—that every actual truth is necessary. Yet on Lewis’s view, if no unicorns were found in any island universe, it would follow that unicorns are impossible, and if there were only one island universe, it would follow that every actual truth is necessary, since things couldn’t be otherwise than they are then.
is no particularly morally important relationship—and merely being spatiotemporally connected is very low on the scale of moral importance—it should not matter or at least matter much. On Lewis’s view, however, my reason to help strangers is only the agent-centered reason to be the cause of goods, because the consequences are always the same. But since the reason to be the cause of goods has extremely low weight, it follows that EMR radically lowers the weight of reasons to help strangers. If we accept a more traditional assessment of the weight of these reasons, we shall have to reject EMR. Instead of cataloguing further problems entailed by EMR, I shall give what I take to be one of the deepest criticisms, which I believe is due to van Inwagen. The criticism is simply that the existence of infinitely many maximally spatiotemporally interconnected aggregates has nothing to do with modality. If we found out that reality contains infinitely many maximally spatiotemporally interconnected aggregates, we would simply have learned that the actual world is richer than we thought—that it contains all of these island universes—rather than learning something about the space of possibilities. Here is a variant on the objection. Suppose that there exist infinitely many maximally spatiotemporally interconnected aggregates, and some of them contain golden mountains but none contains unicorns[3]. It would follow that golden mountains are possible, simply because what is actual is also possible, but surely it would not follow from this fact that unicorns are impossible. And if there were only one spatiotemporally interconnected aggregate, namely ours, it would not follow that modal fatalism is true—that every actual truth is necessary. Yet on Lewis’s view, if no unicorns were found in any island universe, it would follow that unicorns are impossible, and if there were only one island universe, it would follow that every actual truth is necessary, since things couldn’t be otherwise than they are then.