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  1. What Killed Your Plant? Profligate Omissions and Weak Centering.Johannes Himmelreich - 2023 - Erkenntnis 88 (4):1683-1703.
    This paper is on the problem of profligate omissions. The problem is that counterfactual definitions of causation identify as a cause anything that could have prevented an effect but that did not actually occur, which is a highly counterintuitive result. Many solutions of this problem appeal to normative, epistemic, pragmatic, or metaphysical considerations. These existing solutions are in some sense substantive. In contrast, this paper concentrates on the semantics of counterfactuals. I propose to replace Strong Centering with Weak Centering. This (...)
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  • Building low level causation out of high level causation.Samuel Lee - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):9927-9955.
    I argue that high level causal relationships are often more fundamental than low level causal relationships. My argument is based on some general principles governing when one causal relationship will metaphysically ground another—a phenomenon I term derivative causation. These principles are in turn based partly on our intuitive judgments concerning derivative causation in a series of representative examples, and partly on some powerful theoretical considerations in their favour. I show how these principles entail that low level causation can derive from (...)
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  • Actualism Doesn’t Have Control Issues: A Reply to Cohen and Timmerman.Andrew T. Forcehimes & Luke Semrau - 2019 - Philosophia 47 (1):271-277.
    Recently, Cohen and Timmerman, 1–18, 2016) argue that actualism has control issues. The view should be rejected, they claim, as it recognizes a morally irrelevant distinction between counterfactuals over which agents exercise the same kind of control. Here we reply on behalf of actualism.
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  • Sensitivity, safety, and impossible worlds.Guido Melchior - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 178 (3):713-729.
    Modal knowledge accounts that are based on standards possible-worlds semantics face well-known problems when it comes to knowledge of necessities. Beliefs in necessities are trivially sensitive and safe and, therefore, trivially constitute knowledge according to these accounts. In this paper, I will first argue that existing solutions to this necessity problem, which accept standard possible-worlds semantics, are unsatisfactory. In order to solve the necessity problem, I will utilize an unorthodox account of counterfactuals, as proposed by Nolan, on which we also (...)
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  • Conjunction, Connection and Counterfactuals.Chaoan He - 2016 - Erkenntnis 81 (4):705-719.
    The standard Lewis–Stalnaker semantics of counterfactuals, given the Strong Centering Thesis, implies that all true–true counterfactuals are trivially true. McGlynn developed a theory, based on Penczek, to rehabilitate the non-triviality of true–true counterfactuals. I show here that counterfactuals with true but irrelevant components are counterexamples to McGlynn’s account. I argue that an extended version of the connection hypothesis is sustainable, and grounds a full theory of counterfactuals explicable in a broadly standard way, if an indispensable asymmetry between semifacuals and other (...)
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  • In Defense of a Probability Based Semantics for Counterfactuals.Lars Gundersen & Mads Olesen - 2018 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 99 (3):538-549.
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  • Dispositions and Tricks.Gabriele Contessa - 2016 - Erkenntnis 81 (3):587-596.
    According to the Simple Conditional Analysis of disposition ascriptions, disposition ascriptions are to be analyzed in terms of counterfactual conditionals. The Simple Conditional Analysis is notoriously vulnerable to counterexamples. In this paper, I introduce a new sort of counterexample to the Simple Conditional Analysis of disposition ascriptions, which I call ‘tricks’. I then explore a number of possible strategies to modify the Simple Conditional Analysis so as to avoid tricks and conclude that, in order to avoid tricks, the associated counterfactual (...)
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