(a) a lot of people (and conservatives in particular) can’t consistently agree; and

(b) in any event, it’s largely irrelevant.

The argument that Will would not be Will were he not the son of James and Dorothy, requires us to reject any dualism between the soul and body: if we accepted this distinction, then we could easily claim that Will’s soul was lucky to have been born as the son of J&D;, and with the associated benefits thereof. Now, personally, I do reject the dualistic view, but there are a lot of religious people out there who don’t, and for whom Will’s argument should consequently hold no water.

Moreover, even if one thinks (as I do) that Will is right, I don’t think it much matters. To my mind, the argument from luck operates in much the same way as Rawls’ argument from the original position: it’s intended (or at least it works better) as a thought experiment to draw out our moral intuitions, rather than as a tight analytical argument. Original-position-plus-veil-of-ignorance is basically identical to dualism-plus-the-irrelevance-of-luck. And just as it’s no argument against Rawls that there’s no such thing as the original position, similarly, it’s no argument against those who advocate the irrelevance of luck that we’re not actually dualistic beings. That’s just not (or at least needn’t be) the point.

Then, simply put, you are lucky to have been born at all. Assuming you like being alive (and since your goal in life is to be happy, I’ll assume you do), you are lucky to be alive. Your structure of logic seems to depend upon the claim that person W cannot be lucky for having quality Y because without Y, W would not exist as W. I think that makes sense on some level. But can’t the one thing we actually say about X is that it is lucky to have to have the quality of existence of existence? (Perhaps you side with Kant in saying being is not a predicate?)

Similarly, Baldrick-the-toothless-serf wasn’t “unlucky” to be born attached to the land and forced to work for a snotty Norman aristocrat because if he hadn’t been born a serf, he wouldn’t have been Baldrick.

But Kripke isn’t going to justify this situation. You are going to need Karma or Jehovah to help out. Because it still could be unjust that anyone is a king or a serf, even if the people in the kingless, serfless utopia would, in a real sense, be different people from the actual people of feudal England.

Which is to say, who are you arguing against here?

Why? From the guy in the restaurant’s persepctive, it is not a matter of luck: he likes the way you look. (Are you going to tell him you look good only because of your “lucky” genes?) What’s doing the work here? That you accidently meet someone? That the person acts arbitrarily? Is it some notion of desert? Or that somehow your mother is very connected with you in a way a stranger is not?

The same element can have different atomic weights. It’s atomic numbers that differ one element from another. Gold may have different atomic weights but not different atomic numbers.

I have nothing substantive to add to the philosophy here.

- Josh

So let’s say the universe splits at the moment you lose your left arm. The following day, are the two one-armed Will Wilkinsons substantially the same person? Sure (despite a reasonable allowance for moodiness on the part of the one-armed Will). Your instincts and habits of thought and self-image are largely the same. Given a piece of scholarly literature, the two Wills will probably analyze it similarly. Get a call from a telemarketer, and the two Wills will probably dismiss her with the same off-color rankledness. Twenty years later? I would venture a ‘no’, simply because the accumulated drift of the two acceleratingly different lifestyles would mold your personality down two distinctly different paths, even though both Wills would possess the same name.

And assuming you didn’t chop off your own arm (nor blithely walk into a powered chainsaw, for there is a fine line between bad luck and recklessness/stupidity) you would have expereinced “bad luck”, and the consequences of this one moment and the random chaotic reverberations it both generates in your personality and attracts from other people would continue to shape you in ways beyond your control.

Most people understand the concept of the “lucky sperm” without the benefits of a Philosophy degree.

A+ in navel-gazing to all the above posters!

Yeah, I’m sticking to the Kripkean rigid-designation view as well. I don’t think there’s a possible world in which either of us is a pile of slime.

But it definitely seems as though there is a possible world in which my genetic makeup is slightly different. Taking away or adding on the gene for diabetes seems to me to be very much like taking away or adding on a left arm. There are definitely possible worlds in which you, Will, have no left arm. Why aren’t there any non-actual possible worlds in which you do (or don’t) have the gene for diabetes?

Maybe I should just read more Kripke…

That’s not what you’re saying, right?

None of which necessarily matters in terms of moral consequences. I’m just sayin’.

(Speaking of which, I finally got around to reading Schmidtz’ ‘How To Deserve’ the other day. Neat stuff.)