Interventionist counterfactuals

Philosophical Studies 160 (1):139-166 (2012)
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Abstract

A number of recent authors (Galles and Pearl, Found Sci 3 (1):151–182, 1998; Hiddleston, Noûs 39 (4):232–257, 2005; Halpern, J Artif Intell Res 12:317–337, 2000) advocate a causal modeling semantics for counterfactuals. But the precise logical significance of the causal modeling semantics remains murky. Particularly important, yet particularly under-explored, is its relationship to the similarity-based semantics for counterfactuals developed by Lewis (Counterfactuals. Harvard University Press, 1973b). The causal modeling semantics is both an account of the truth conditions of counterfactuals, and an account of which inferences involving counterfactuals are valid. As an account of truth conditions, it is incomplete. While Lewis's similarity semantics lets us evaluate counterfactuals with arbitrarily complex antecedents and consequents, the causal modeling semantics makes it hard to ascertain the truth conditions of all but a highly restricted class of counterfactuals. I explain how to extend the causal modeling language to encompass a wider range of sentences, and provide a sound and complete axiomatization for the extended language. Extending the truth conditions for counterfactuals has serious consequences concerning valid inference. The extended language is unlike any logic of Lewis's: modus ponens is invalid, and classical logical equivalents cannot be freely substituted in the antecedents of conditionals

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R. A. Briggs
Stanford University

Citations of this work

Grounding in the image of causation.Jonathan Schaffer - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (1):49-100.
Metaphysical Causation.Alastair Wilson - 2018 - Noûs 52 (4):723-751.
A Uniform Theory of Conditionals.William B. Starr - 2014 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 43 (6):1019-1064.
A Model-Invariant Theory of Causation.J. Dmitri Gallow - 2021 - Philosophical Review 130 (1):45-96.

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References found in this work

Counterfactuals.David K. Lewis - 1973 - Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.
Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference.Judea Pearl - 2000 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Causation.David Lewis - 1973 - Journal of Philosophy 70 (17):556-567.

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