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One might object that offering a set of conditions for determining whether a world is close enough for it to satisfy the Safety Condition is a hopeless task. Accordingly, the Safety Condition itself is hopeless. When discussing a similar problem with his view of counter-factuals, Lewis says: ‘It may be said that even if possible worlds are tolerable, still the notion of comparative overall similarity of worlds is hopelessly unclear, and so no fit foun-dation for the clarification of counterfactuals or anything else’ (Lewis 1973, 91, emphasis mine). Since the objection is, roughly, that the notion of closeness is too obscure to play any fundamental role in our theory of rights, let us call this the Obscure Problem.

There are several things to say in reply to this problem. The first is to note the Safety Condition has principled extensional accuracy where other solutions to the Problem of Harmless Wronging fail. It accounts for why Passenger has a right against Attendant denying her admittance onto the plane. And, in chapter 8, we see it accounts for why Target has a right against Shooter subjecting her to risk of harm. The modally undemand-ing, canonical version of the Interest Theory does not offer such an account. (And recall, even if one is not wedded to the Interest Theory, I argued harmless wronging is still

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problematic.)¹⁴⁸ This gives us evidence that we are closer to having the correct theory of rights with the Safety Condition than without it, even if we cannot offer a robust account of how to determine what worlds count as sufficiently close.¹⁴⁹

Second, the force of the objection itself can be called into question. One might think that delineating the set of close worlds is going to be too obscure because either it is “stood” or it is “vague.” With Lewis, I think talk of the closeness of worlds is not ill-under-stood, but vague (Lewis 1973, 91–95). However, moral theory is already vague, so vague-ness itself should not worry us. For example, most people think it is permissible to break a promise if there is enough good at stake—but how much good is sufficient? Williamson notes how with respect to the safety condition on knowledge that closeness will be vague because knowledge itself is vague: ‘If one believes p truly in a case α, one must avoid false belief in other cases sufficiently similar to α in order to count as reliable enough to know p in α. The vagueness in “sufficiently similar” matches the vagueness in “reliable”, and in

“know”’ (Williamson 2000, 100). We could posit a similar suggestion here: since whether one’s wellbeing is sufficiently weighty to place others under a duty is underspecified and vague, which worlds count as close enough will be underspecified and vague. But it is not fair to say it is ill-understood. Above in section 2.2., we offered the beginnings of a fairly robust account of closeness.

Third, the Obscure Problem can be mitigated by distinguishing between comparative and quantitative closeness. We have been comparing degrees of closeness between worlds. Of both Plane Crash and Hitmen, I said that world 2 is closer to world 1 than world 3 is to world 1. But, I said, world 3 is still pretty close to world 1. Implicit in this is some notion of other worlds being less close than world 3 to world 1 (think of the worlds in which Passenger and Hitman1 do not make it out of bed). However, this need not imply that closeness can be measured in some precise way. As Lewis puts it, we need only a comparative and not necessarily a quantitative concept of closeness: ‘One world is more similar than another to a third; but we need never say how much more, and the question how much more need

148 Chapter 1, section 5, and chapter 3, section 4.

149 In a similar context, Kagan says ‘insofar as it [his modal personism] can accommodate many of our deeply held intuitions […] I think there may well be a great deal to be said for it’ (Kagan 2016, 18).

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not make sense’ (Lewis 1973, 50).¹⁵⁰ The worry that the Safety Condition is too obscure should be lessened by bearing this in mind—we need not be relying on some perfectly quantifiable account of closeness.

In discussion of modal safety elsewhere in the literature, most approaches to determining which worlds count as sufficiently close focus on identifying limiting cases at either end of the spectrum (identifying worlds that are, and are not, close and pointing to some mech-anisms that explain this) (Williamson 2000, 123–28; Pritchard 2005, 145–78; Pettit 2012, 32). We might look to Williamson’s remark that we can think of safety in the same way as we think of a child being safe if she is six feet from the edge of a cliff, but unsafe if she is six inches from the edge. Features of context, such as the severity of the harm that would befall the child were the event to occur, will play a role in determining how close a world needs to be in order for it to be too close for the child to be safe. Within the context of freedom (which, below, I suggest is modally demanding), Phillip Pettit suggests that ‘this range of worlds is discernible only on an intuitive, context-sensitive basis’ (Pettit 2012, 32).

Nicolas Southwood goes as far as to say: ‘It seems to me that to have an understanding of the relevant [modally demanding] value just is, in part, to have an understanding of the relevant range of circumstances’ (Southwood 2015, 510).

Perhaps the preceding might only fuel one’s scepticism about the Safety Condition. In order to dampen the foregoing worries, let us consider other areas of moral, political, and legal theory in which modal safety is required.

First, consider freedom. Suppose an agent is faced with a set of doors corresponding to their option set (Berlin 1969, xlviii). Perhaps freedom consists of the absence of interfer-ence with an agent’s preferred option. This view will not do. It is implausible that agents are free in making decisions when, even though the door they choose is open, all other doors might have been locked. It is also objectionable that agents can make themselves

150 Justin Snedegar offered a similar value-charged example. We might say, “Both £100 and a nice dinner are better than a cup of coffee, though £1,000 is much better.” But how much better? It is unclear whether there even is an answer to this question. Even a value-monist, who thinks there is an answer to this question, must admit that it is not going to be an easy task figuring that out. Yet, does this obscurity lead us to be sceptical of Snedegar’s statement?

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(more) free by adapting their preferences in line with those options available to them (Berlin 1969, xxxix). Instead, for an agent to be free perhaps it must be that any door they might have pushed is open. Call this the Non-Interference View (Carter 1999; Kramer 2003). The Non-Interference View requires safety across an agent’s option set.

Suppose that the set of doors are all open, yet a third-party has the ability to lock any of the doors. She decides not to. A third view of freedom, the Non-Domination View, says that non-interference (any door being open) is not sufficient for freedom. Instead, ‘[w]hat freedom ideally requires is not just that the doors be open but that there be no door-keeper who has the power of closing a door’ (Pettit 2012, 66). We can see that the Non-Domination View also appeals to safety. Yet, unlike the Non-Interference View, it is not sufficient that we see how agents’ options fare across worlds; we also consider additional worlds in which others might be differently disposed towards that agent.

Second, consider the friendship between two individuals, Homer and Barney. Plausibly, both whether Homer and Barney are friends and the value of their friendship requires that Homer thinks of and treats Barney in certain ways. He must treat Barney with concern and compassion. He must help Barney, even if that help is quite demanding. However, both their friendship and its value do not merely require that Homer think of and treat Barney in the relevant ways in the actual world. Rather, it requires that Homer would think of and treat Barney in certain ways in other worlds, were things to be different (Pettit 2015, 11–42). For example, both their friendship and its value require that Homer would treat Barney in the relevant ways even if he had less time to invest in their friendship, even if Barney became less funny, and so on. Both the friendship itself and its value requires safety across relevant worlds.

Now, as with the Safety Condition, both freedom (either as Interference or Non-Domination) and friendship do not require safety across all worlds. For example, in order for an agent to be free in any morally meaningful sense, we need not require that her choices not be interfered with or dominated across all states of affairs. That would be too demanding.¹⁵¹ Similarly, Homer and Barney’s friendship does not require that Homer

151 See Pettit: ‘this range of worlds […] does not include all possible worlds’ (Pettit 2012, 32).

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thinks of and treats Barney in the relevant ways across all circumstances. Homer need not help Barney move a dead body. As with the Safety Condition, we require safety only across some set of close worlds. So, how does this discussion relate to our sceptic who thinks we cannot delineate which worlds count as close enough for the Safety Condition?

Well, if one is sceptical of the positive account of closeness developed across subsection 2.2 and the first half of this subsection, one is going to need to rethink many other areas of moral, legal, and political theory.¹⁵² Because of this, I am going to press on with the Safety Condition.

But before doing so, suppose my optimism about the robustness of the account of close-ness as well as discovering which worlds are sufficiently close is misplaced. This need not mean modality is playing no role in rights; rather, it could mean only that modality does not help us determine which rights obtain. In the context of replying to a similar challenge for the safety condition on knowledge, Williamson says: ‘In many cases, someone with no idea of what knowledge is would be unable to determine whether safety obtained […]

One may have to decide whether safety obtains by first deciding whether knowledge ob-tains, rather than vice versa’ (Williamson 2009, 305). Williamson thinks safety offers a circular account of knowledge. Similarly, we could think the Safety Condition is a circular account of rights.

Now, one might think there is a problem with this circular account of determining whether a world is sufficiently close: it means we cannot learn anything about the nature of directed duties and rights by appeal to the Safety Condition.¹⁵³ However, this objection is misplaced. Even if we cannot determine whether one is owed a duty and holds a right by the lights of the Safety Condition alone, we ought still be interested in why it is neces-sary that whenever one is owed a duty, that duty is grounded in how one fares across close worlds. This is so even if we need a prior understanding of whether one is owed that duty to know whether the world is as close enough.

152 For other modally demanding goods, see (Raz 1986, 369–99; Pettit 2015; Southwood 2015; Kagan 2016;

Lazar 2017).

153 Those who are not worried about circularity will not be so worried about this problem (Cruft 2019).

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