The ethics of empty worlds

Australasian Journal of Philosophy 83 (3):349-356 (2005)
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Abstract

Drawing inspiration from the ethical pluralism of G. E. Moore's Principia Ethica, I contend that one empty world can be morally better than another. By ?empty? I mean that it is devoid of concrete entities (things that have a position in space or time). These worlds have no thickets or thimbles, no thinkers, no thoughts. Infinitely many of these worlds have laws of nature, abstract entities, and perhaps, space and time. These non-concrete differences are enough to make some of them better than others. 1I thank Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, John Carroll, and Gideon Rosen for their comments and suggestions

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Roy Sorensen
University of Texas at Austin

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References found in this work

Four Dimensionalism.Theodore Sider - 1997 - Philosophical Review 106 (2):197-231.
Four Dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time.Theodore Sider - 2004 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68 (3):642-647.
Future generations: Further problems.Derek Parfit - 1982 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 11 (2):113-172.
Why Is There Anything At All?Peter van Inwagen & E. J. Lowe - 1996 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 70 (1):95-120.
There might be nothing.Thomas Baldwin - 1996 - Analysis 56 (4):231-238.

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