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Counterfactuals

Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 36 (3):602-605 (1973)

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  1. Causation: An alternative.Wolfgang Spohn - 2006 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57 (1):93-119.
    The paper builds on the basically Humean idea that A is a cause of B iff A and B both occur, A precedes B, and A raises the metaphysical or epistemic status of B given the obtaining circumstances. It argues that in pursuit of a theory of deterministic causation this ‘status raising’ is best explicated not in regularity or counterfactual terms, but in terms of ranking functions. On this basis, it constructs a rigorous theory of deterministic causation that successfully deals (...)
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  • Direct and indirect causes.Wolfgang Spohn - 1990 - Topoi 9 (2):125-145.
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  • Time travel, coincidences, and counterfactuals.Theodore Sider - 2002 - Philosophical Studies 110 (2):115 - 138.
    In no possible world does a time traveler succeed in killing herearlier self before she ever enters a time machine. So if many,many time travelers went back in time trying to kill theirunprotected former selves, the time travelers would fail inmany strange, coincidental ways, slipping on bananapeels, killing the wrong victim, and so on. Such cases producedoubts about time travel. How could ``coincidences'' beguaranteed to happen? And wouldn't the certainty of coincidentalfailure imply that time travelers are not free to killtheir (...)
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  • Concrete possible worlds.Phillip Bricker - 2008 - In Theodore Sider, John Hawthorne & Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), Contemporary debates in metaphysics. Malden, MA: Blackwell. pp. 111--134.
    In this chapter, I survey what I call Lewisian approaches to modality: approaches that analyze modality in terms of concrete possible worlds and their parts. I take the following four theses to be characteristic of Lewisian approaches to modality. (1) There is no primitive modality. (2) There exists a plurality of concrete possible worlds. (3) Actuality is an indexical concept. (4) Modality de re is to be analyzed in terms of counterparts, not transworld identity. After an introductory section in which (...)
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  • David Lewis: On the Plurality of Worlds.Phillip Bricker - 2006 - In John Shand (ed.), Central Works of Philosophy, Vol. 5: The Twentieth Century: Quine and After. Acumen Publishing. pp. 246-267.
    David Lewis's book 'On the Plurality of Worlds' mounts an extended defense of the thesis of modal realism, that the world we inhabit the entire cosmos of which we are a part is but one of a vast plurality of worlds, or cosmoi, all causally and spatiotemporally isolated from one another. The purpose of this article is to provide an accessible summary of the main positions and arguments in Lewis's book.
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  • Minimal belief change and the pareto principle.Oliver Schulte - 1999 - Synthese 118 (3):329-361.
    This paper analyzes the notion of a minimal belief change that incorporates new information. I apply the fundamental decision-theoretic principle of Pareto-optimality to derive a notion of minimal belief change, for two different representations of belief: First, for beliefs represented by a theory – a deductively closed set of sentences or propositions – and second for beliefs represented by an axiomatic base for a theory. Three postulates exactly characterize Pareto-minimal revisions of theories, yielding a weaker set of constraints than the (...)
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  • Counterfactuals, causal independence and conceptual circularity.Jonathan Schaffer - 2004 - Analysis 64 (4):299–308.
    David Lewis’s semantics for counterfactuals remains the standard view. Yet counter-examples have emerged, which suggest a need to invoke causal independence, and thus threaten conceptual circularity. I will review some of these counter-examples (§§1–2), illustrate how causal independence proves useful (§3), and suggest that any resulting circularity is unproblematic (§4).
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  • Ifs, though, and because.Hans Rott - 1986 - Erkenntnis 25 (3):345-370.
    The paper proposes a unified analysis of the natural language connectives 'if', 'if … might', 'even if' (all of them with indicative and subjunctive mood), 'because' and 'though'. They are all interpreted as instances of universal (pro)conditionals, unconditionals, or counterconditionals. The paper imports the notion of relevance into the meaning of conditionals, viewing conditionals as close in meaning to explanations and statements about causal relations. The antecedent of a conditional is interpreted as being relevant for its consequent, thus avoiding the (...)
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  • Conditionals and theory change: Revisions, expansions, and additions.Hans Rott - 1989 - Synthese 81 (1):91-113.
    This paper dwells upon formal models of changes of beliefs, or theories, which are expressed in languages containing a binary conditional connective. After defining the basic concept of a (non-trivial) belief revision model. I present a simple proof of Gärdenfors''s (1986) triviality theorem. I claim that on a proper understanding of this theorem we must give up the thesis that consistent revisions (additions) are to be equated with logical expansions. If negated or might conditionals are interpreted on the basis of (...)
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  • Modal realisms.Kris McDaniel - 2006 - Philosophical Perspectives 20 (1):303–331.
    Possibilism—the view that there are non-actual, merely possible entities—is a surprisingly resilient doctrine.1 One particularly hardy strand of possibilism—the modal realism championed by David Lewis—continues to attract both foes who seek to demonstrate its falsity (or at least stare its advocates into apostasy) and friends who hope to defend modal realism (or, when necessary, modify modal realism so as to avoid problematic objections).2 Although I am neither a foe nor friend of modal realism (but some of my best friends are!), (...)
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  • Against explanationist skepticism regarding philosophical intuitions.Joel Pust - 2001 - Philosophical Studies 106 (3):227 - 258.
    Though most of analytic philosophy is based upon intuitions, some philosophers are beginning to question whether intuitions are an appropriate basis for philosophical theory. This paper responds to the arguments of some contemporary philosophers who hold that intuitions should not be treated as evidence for anything other than our contingent psychological constitution. It begins with a demonstration that skeptical arguments by Gilbert Harman and Alvin Goldman are variations on an argument with the potential to undermine the use of intuitions in (...)
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  • Counterfactuals with true components.Alan Penczek - 1997 - Erkenntnis 46 (1):79-85.
    One criticism of David Lewis's account of counterfactuals is that it sometimes assigns the wrong truth-value to a counterfactual when both antecedent and consequent happen to be true. Lewis has suggested a possible remedy to this situation, but commentators have found this to be unsatisfactory. I suggest an alternative solution which involves a modification of Lewis's truth conditions, but which confines itself to the resources already present in his account. This modification involves the device of embedding one counterfactual within another. (...)
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  • Hypothetical imperatives and conditional obligations.Ilkka Niiniluoto - 1986 - Synthese 66 (1):111 - 133.
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  • Defending a possible-worlds account of indicative conditionals.Daniel Nolan - 2003 - Philosophical Studies 116 (3):215-269.
    One very popular kind of semantics for subjunctive conditionals is aclosest-worlds account along the lines of theories given by David Lewisand Robert Stalnaker. If we could give the same sort of semantics forindicative conditionals, we would have a more unified account of themeaning of ``if ... then ...'' statements, one with manyadvantages for explaining the behaviour of conditional sentences. Such atreatment of indicative conditionals, however, has faced a battery ofobjections. This paper outlines a closest-worlds account of indicativeconditionals that does better (...)
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  • Why we need a relevant theory of conditionals.Edwin D. Mares - 1994 - Topoi 13 (1):31-36.
    This paper presents ConR (Conditional R), a logic of conditionals based on Anderson and Belnap''s system R. A Routley-Meyer-style semantics for ConR is given for the system (the completeness of ConR over this semantics is proved in E. Mares and A. Fuhrmann, A Relevant Theory of Conditionals (unpublished MS)). Moreover, it is argued that adopting a relevant theory of conditionals will improve certain theories that utilize conditionals, i.e. Lewis'' theory of causation, Lewis'' dyadic deontic logic, and Chellas'' dyadic deontic logic.
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  • DDL unlimited: Dynamic doxastic logic for introspective agents.Sten Lindström & Wlodek Rabinowicz - 1999 - Erkenntnis 50 (2-3):353-385.
    The theories of belief change developed within the AGM-tradition are not logics in the proper sense, but rather informal axiomatic theories of belief change. Instead of characterizing the models of belief and belief change in a formalized object language, the AGM-approach uses a natural language — ordinary mathematical English — to characterize the mathematical structures that are under study. Recently, however, various authors such as Johan van Benthem and Maarten de Rijke have suggested representing doxastic change within a formal logical (...)
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  • Subjunctives, dispositions and chances.Isaac Levi - 1977 - Synthese 34 (4):423 - 455.
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  • Counterfactuals.Igal Kvart - 1992 - Erkenntnis 36 (2):139 - 179.
    In this article I offer an approach to counterfactuals based on a notion of objective probability. It is in the spirit of, though it does not fall squarely under, the metalinguistic model. Thus, it is not developed in terms of possible worlds, or notions parasitic on them (e.g., similarity). Its dominant features are rooted in objective probability and causal relevance (analyzed probabilistically), and thus it is not close in spirit to a maximal similarity or a minimal change approach.
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  • An approach to why-questions.Antti Koura - 1988 - Synthese 74 (2):191 - 206.
    The purpose of this paper is to give a semantical analysis of why-questions. Why-questions will be construed as requests for knowledge. Special attention will be paid to considering what the conditions for conclusive answerhood are in the case of why-questions. Since explanations can often be thought of as answers to why-questions, we also discuss some topics in the theory of explanation.
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  • Counterfactuals and explanation.Boris Kment - 2006 - Mind 115 (458):261-310.
    On the received view, counterfactuals are analysed using the concept of closeness between possible worlds: the counterfactual 'If it had been the case that p, then it would have been the case that q' is true at a world w just in case q is true at all the possible p-worlds closest to w. The degree of closeness between two worlds is usually thought to be determined by weighting different respects of similarity between them. The question I consider in the (...)
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  • Humean dispositionalism.Toby Handfield - 2008 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 86 (1):113-126.
    Humean metaphysics is characterized by a rejection of necessary connections between distinct existences. Dispositionalists claim that there are basic causal powers. The existence of such properties is widely held to be incompatible with the Humean rejection of necessary connections. In this paper I present a novel theory of causal powers that vindicates the dispositionalist claim that causal powers are basic, without embracing brute necessary connections. The key assumptions of the theory are that there are natural types of causal processes, and (...)
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  • Reasoning with moral conflicts.John F. Horty - 2003 - Noûs 37 (4):557–605.
    Let us say that a normative conflict is a situation in which an agent ought to perform an action A, and also ought to perform an action B, but in which it is impossible for the agent to perform both A and B. Not all normative conflicts are moral conflicts, of course. It may be that the agent ought to perform the action A for reasons of personal generosity, but ought to perform the action B for reasons of prudence: perhaps (...)
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  • What conditional probability could not be.Alan Hájek - 2003 - Synthese 137 (3):273--323.
    Kolmogorov''s axiomatization of probability includes the familiarratio formula for conditional probability: 0).$$ " align="middle" border="0">.
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  • The miraculous conception of counterfactuals.John F. Halpin - 1991 - Philosophical Studies 63 (3):271 - 290.
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  • Space-time counterfactuals.J. Finkelstein - 1999 - Synthese 119 (3):287-298.
    A definition is proposed to give precise meaning to the counterfactual statements that often appear in discussions of the implications of quantum mechanics. Of particular interest are counterfactual statements which involve events occurring at space-like separated points, which do not have an absolute time ordering. Some consequences of this definition are discussed.
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  • A formal analysis of relevance.James P. Delgrande & Francis Jeffry Pelletier - 1998 - Erkenntnis 49 (2):137-173.
    We investigate the notion of relevance as it pertains to ‘commonsense’, subjunctive conditionals. Relevance is taken here as a relation between a property (such as having a broken wing) and a conditional (such as birds typically fly). Specifically, we explore a notion of ‘causative’ relevance, distinct from ‘evidential’ relevance found, for example, in probabilistic approaches. A series of postulates characterising a minimal, parsimonious concept of relevance is developed. Along the way we argue that no purely logical account of relevance (even (...)
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  • Two notions of epistemic validity.Horacio Arló Costa & Isaac Levi - 1996 - Synthese 109 (2):217 - 262.
    How to accept a conditional? F. P. Ramsey proposed the following test in (Ramsey 1990).(RT) If A, then B must be accepted with respect to the current epistemic state iff the minimal hypothetical change of it needed to accept A also requires accepting B.
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  • The diagonal and the demon.Juan Comesaña - 2002 - Philosophical Studies 110 (3):249 - 266.
    Reliabilism about epistemic justification - the thesis that what makes a belief epistemically justified is that it was produced by a reliable process of belief-formation - must face two problems. First, what has been called "the new evil demon problem", which arises from the idea that the beliefs of victims of an evil demon are as justified as our own beliefs, although they are not - the objector claims - reliably produced. And second, the problem of diagnosing why skepticism is (...)
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  • A causal model for causal priority.Martin Bunzl - 1984 - Erkenntnis 21 (1):31 - 44.
    Recent attempts to fix the direction of causal priority without reference to the direction of temporal priority have begun with an analysis of the causal relation itself. I offer a method, based on causal modelling theory, designed to determine the direction of causal priority while remaining as agnostic as possible about the nature of the causal relation.
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  • Indicative conditionals.Richard Bradley - 2002 - Erkenntnis 56 (3):345-378.
    Adams Thesis has much evidence in its favour, but David Lewis famously showed that it cannot be true, in all but the most trivial of cases, if conditionals are proprositions and their probabilities are classical probabilities of truth. In this paper I show thatsimilar results can be constructed for a much wider class of conditionals. The fact that these results presuppose that the logic of conditionals is Boolean motivates a search for a non-Boolean alternative. It is argued that the exact (...)
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  • Strategic behavior and counterfactuals.Cristina Bicchieri - 1988 - Synthese 76 (1):135 - 169.
    The difficulty of defining rational behavior in game situations is that the players'' strategies will depend on their expectations about other players'' strategies. These expectations are beliefs the players come to the game with. Game theorists assume these beliefs to be rational in the very special sense of beingobjectively correct but no explanation is offered of the mechanism generating this property of the belief system. In many interesting cases, however, such a rationality requirement is not enough to guarantee that an (...)
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  • Explanation and laws.Alexander Bird - 1999 - Synthese 120 (1):1--18.
    In this paper I examine two aspects of Hempel’s covering-law models of explanation. These are (i) nomic subsumption and (ii) explication by models. Nomic subsumption is the idea that to explain a fact is to show how it falls under some appropriate law. This conception of explanation Hempel explicates using a pair of models, where, in this context, a model is a template or pattern such that if something fits it, then that thing is an explanation. A range of well-known (...)
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  • Counterfactual analyses of causation: The problem of effects and epiphenomena revisited.Stephen Barker - 2003 - Noûs 37 (1):133–150.
    I argue that Lewis's counterfactual theory of causation, given his treatment of counterfactuals in terms of world-comparative similarity faces insuperable problems in the form of the problem of effects and the problem of epiphenomena.
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  • Monotonicity in opaque verbs.Thomas Ede Zimmermann - 2006 - Linguistics and Philosophy 29 (6):715 - 761.
    The paper is about the interpretation of opaque verbs like “seek”, “owe”, and “resemble” which allow for unspecific readings of their (indefinite) objects. It is shown that the following two observations create a problem for semantic analysis: (a) The opaque position is upward monotone: “John seeks a unicorn” implies “John seeks an animal”, given that “unicorn” is more specific than “animal”. (b) Indefinite objects of opaque verbs allow for higher-order, or “underspecific”, readings: “Jones is looking for something Smith is looking (...)
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  • Epistemic Modals.Seth Yalcin - 2007 - Mind 116 (464):983-1026.
    Epistemic modal operators give rise to something very like, but also very unlike, Moore's paradox. I set out the puzzling phenomena, explain why a standard relational semantics for these operators cannot handle them, and recommend an alternative semantics. A pragmatics appropriate to the semantics is developed and interactions between the semantics, the pragmatics, and the definition of consequence are investigated. The semantics is then extended to probability operators. Some problems and prospects for probabilistic representations of content and context are explored.
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  • Counterfactuals and causal explanation.James Woodward - 2002 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 18 (1):41 – 72.
    This article defends the use of interventionist counterfactuals to elucidate causal and explanatory claims against criticisms advanced by James Bogen and Peter Machamer. Against Bogen, I argue that counterfactual claims concerning what would happen under interventions are meaningful and have determinate truth values, even in a deterministic world. I also argue, against both Machamer and Bogen, that we need to appeal to counterfactuals to capture the notions like causal relevance and causal mechanism. Contrary to what both authors suppose, counterfactuals are (...)
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  • Conversation and conditionals.J. Robert G. Williams - 2008 - Philosophical Studies 138 (2):211 - 223.
    I outline and motivate a way of implementing a closest world theory of indicatives, appealing to Stalnaker's framework of open conversational possibilities. Stalnakerian conversational dynamics helps us resolve two outstanding puzzles for a such a theory of indicative conditionals. The first puzzle -- concerning so-called 'reverse Sobel sequences' -- can be resolved by conversation dynamics in a theoryneutral way: the explanation works as much for Lewisian counterfactuals as for the account of indicatives developed here. Resolving the second puzzle, by contrast, (...)
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  • In the mood.Kai Frederick Wehmeier - 2004 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 33 (6):607-630.
    The purpose of the present paper is to challenge some received assumptions about the logical analysis of modal English, and to show that these assumptions are crucial to certain debates in current philosophy of language. Specifically, I will argue that the standard analysis in terms of quantified modal logic mistakenly fudges important grammatical distinctions, and that the validity of Kripke's modal argument against description theories of proper names crucially depends on ensuing equivocations.
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  • Conditionals and indexical relativism.Brian Weatherson - 2009 - Synthese 166 (2):333-357.
    I set out and defend a view on indicative conditionals that I call “indexical relativism ”. The core of the view is that which proposition is expressed by an utterance of a conditional is a function of the speaker’s context and the assessor’s context. This implies a kind of relativism, namely that a single utterance may be correctly assessed as true by one assessor and false by another.
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  • Defaults in update semantics.Frank Veltman - 1996 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 25 (3):221 - 261.
    The aim of this paper is twofold: (i) to introduce the framework of update semantics and to explain what kind of semantic phenomena may successfully be analysed in it: (ii) to give a detailed analysis of one such phenomenon: default reasoning.
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  • My beliefs about your beliefs: A case study in theory of mind and epistemic logic.Hans van Ditmarsch & Willem Labuschagne - 2007 - Synthese 155 (2):191-209.
    We model three examples of beliefs that agents may have about other agents’ beliefs, and provide motivation for this conceptualization from the theory of mind literature. We assume a modal logical framework for modelling degrees of belief by partially ordered preference relations. In this setting, we describe that agents believe that other agents do not distinguish among their beliefs (‘no preferences’), that agents believe that the beliefs of other agents are in part as their own (‘my preferences’), and the special (...)
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  • Models of intentional explanation.Robrecht Vanderbeeken - 2004 - Philosophical Explorations 7 (3):233 – 246.
    The controversy about intentional explanation of action concerns how these explanations work. What kind of model allows us to capture the dependency or relevance relation between the explanans, i.e. the beliefs and desires of the agent, and the explanandum, i.e. the action? In this paper, I argue that the causal mechanical model can do the job. Causal mechanical intentional explanations consist in a reference to the mechanisms of practical reasoning of the agent that motivated the agent to act, i.e. to (...)
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  • Kripke frame with graded accessibility and fuzzy possible world semantics.Nobu-Yuki Suzuki - 1997 - Studia Logica 59 (2):249-269.
    A possible world structure consist of a set W of possible worlds and an accessibility relation R. We take a partial function r(·,·) to the unit interval [0, 1] instead of R and obtain a Kripke frame with graded accessibility r Intuitively, r(x, y) can be regarded as the reliability factor of y from x We deal with multimodal logics corresponding to Kripke frames with graded accessibility in a fairly general setting. This setting provides us with a framework for fuzzy (...)
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  • Disjunction and alternativeness.Mandy Simons - 2001 - Linguistics and Philosophy 24 (5):597-619.
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  • Normische gesetzeshypothesen und die wissenschaftsphilosophische bedeutung Des nichtmonotonen schliessens.Gerhard Schurz - 2001 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 32 (1):65-107.
    Normic Laws and the Significance of Nonmonotonic Reasoning for Philosophy of Science. Normic laws have the form ‘if A then normally B’. They have been discovered in the explanation debate, but were considered as empirically vacuous (§1). I argue that the prototypical (or ideal) normality of normic laws implies statistical normality (§2), whence normic laws have empirical content. In §3–4 I explain why reasoning from normic laws is nonmonotonic, and why the understanding of the individual case is so important here. (...)
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  • The semantics of scandinavian free choice items.Kjell Johan Saeboe - 2001 - Linguistics and Philosophy 24 (6):737-788.
    I present an analysis of Free Choice Items (FCIs), based on Scandinavian, where FCIs are complex and distinct from polarity sensitive items. Scandinavian FCIs are argued to have two components. One is a universal quantifying into modal contexts. The other is an operator mapping a type (s,t) expression onto itself, adjoining to the closest type t or (s,t) expression. Thus invoking Intensional Functional Application, this operator requires the presence of a modal in the scope of the universal quantifier. Facts concerning (...)
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  • Stability, strength and sensitivity: Converting belief into knowledge.Hans Rott - 2004 - Erkenntnis 61 (2-3):469-493.
    In this paper I discuss the relation between various properties that have been regarded as important for determining whether or not a belief constitutes a piece of knowledge: its stability, strength and sensitivity to truth, as well as the strength of the epistemic position in which the subject is with respect to this belief. Attempts to explicate the relevant concepts more formally with the help of systems of spheres of possible worlds (à la Lewis and Grove) must take care to (...)
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  • “Laws of Nature” as an Indexical Term: A Reinterpretation of Lewis's Best-System Analysis.John Roberts - 1999 - Philosophy of Science 66 (3):511.
    David Lewis's best-system analysis of laws of nature is perhaps the best known sophisticated regularity theory of laws. Its strengths are widely recognized, even by some of its ablest critics. Yet it suffers from what appears to be a glaring weakness: It seems to grant an arbitrary privilege to the standards of our own scientific culture. I argue that by reformulating, or reinterpreting, Lewis's exposition of the best-system analysis, we arrive at a view that is free of this weakness. The (...)
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  • Domains of discourse.François Recanati - 1996 - Linguistics and Philosophy 19 (5):445 - 475.
    In the first part of this paper I present a defence of the Austinian semantic approach to incomplete quantifiers and similar phenomena (section 2-4). It is part of my defence of Austinian semantics that it incorporates a cognitive dimension (section 4). This cognitive dimension makes it possible to connect Austinian semantics to various cognitive theories of discourse interpretation. In the second part of the paper (sections 5-7), I establish connections between Austinian semantics and four particular theories: • the theory of (...)
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  • A counterfactual analysis of causation.Murali Ramachandran - 1997 - Mind 106 (422):263-277.
    On David Lewis's original analysis of causation, c causes e only if c is linked to e by a chain of distinct events such that each event in the chain (counter-factually) depends on the former one. But this requirement precludes the possibility of late pre-emptive causation, of causation by fragile events, and of indeterministic causation. Lewis proposes three different strategies for accommodating these three kinds of cases, but none of these turn out to be satisfactory. I offer a single analysis (...)
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