Counteressential Conditionals
Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 5 (1):73-81 (2016)
Abstract
Making sense of our reasoning in disputes about necessary truths requires admitting nonvacuous counterpossibles. One class of these is the counteressentials, which ask us to make contrary to fact suppositions about essences. A popular strategy in accounting for nonvacuous counterpossibles is to extend the standard possible worlds semantics for subjunctive conditionals by the addition of impossible worlds. A conditional A □-> C is then taken to be true if all of the nearest A worlds are C worlds. I argue that a straightforward extension of the standard possible worlds semantics to impossible worlds does not result in a viable account of counteressentials and propose an alternative covering law semantics for counteressentials.Author's Profile
DOI
10.1002/tht3.196
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Citations of this work
Foundational Grounding and the Argument from Contingency.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2017 - Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion 8.
Counterpossible Dependence and the Efficacy of the Divine Will.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2017 - Faith and Philosophy 34 (1):3-16.
References found in this work
Review of *The Metaphysics within Physics* by Tim Maudlin. [REVIEW]Chris Daly - 2009 - Analysis 69 (2):374-375.