Pleading Philosophy

There's a scene in Sherman's March where the filmmaker is chatting with a scholar of linguistics who is one of the women he courts over the course of the movie.  (The film begins as a historical documentary and ends up a meditation on southern womanhood or, to paraphrase the subtitle, a story about the improbable search for love under the prospect of nuclear holocaust.  Eighties.)  She casually mentions her interest in counterpart theory, some crutch that logicians have used to facilitate the discussion of "possible worlds" with respect to events and morality.  As I understand it, the idea is that there is some counterpart of mine in the "possible world" where I, for instance, continued to live on the east coast instead of moving west.  I suppose there is also the possible world where I ceased to breathe for a moment while typing this sentence, instead of breathing at pace as I happened to do.  Seems like a slippery slope, maybe even pointless from a practical standpoint.  (I'm no logician.)  But in any case, since there are these entirely possible other worlds which differ from what actually happened in this one, I must have a counterpart in each who is my doppelganger in that parallel universe.  He might be thinking of me right now, over there on his east coast.  Or all of them are thinking of all the others, or whatever.

She merely mentions that it's interesting to considering your life in reference to all your counterparts.  I agreed that it was interesting, at least enough to warrant an internet search, but apparently it's so arcane that it barely exists on the internet.  I mean, it's there, but as I write it's there only in syllabi, PDF lecture notes, and obscure blog debates.  That's it.  It has no explanatory page, it has no wikipedia summary, it has no champion stewarding its google-able existence.  Google does not contain the entire known and referenced-in-rentable-movies universe.

Anyway, my favorite part of this brief and fruitless exploration was stumbling on a blog post where someone worries if morality is baseless in a world(s) where everything could be blamed on counterparts.  Which is to say, if my counterparts took all the other available courses of action, down to the very last ethical one, then I was forced into unethical behavior just by the luck of the draw.  Don't blame me...the other mes had dibs on being good. 

I'm totally using this excuse the next time I screw up. 

Comments

[Pinkythinky]

Bet you like Ben Elton the commedian and the Goodies, and Fawlty Towers - seventies English TV - oh we have SUCH a heritage!

[Pinkythinky]

Bet you like Ben Elton the commedian and the Goodies, and Fawlty Towers - seventies English TV - oh we have SUCH a heritage!