Results for 'counterfactuals'

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  1.  26
    Moral Facts and the Problem of Justification in Ethics.Counterfactual Dependence - 1995 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 73 (3).
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  2. transworld untrustworthiness and Plantinga's free will defense'.Michael Bergmann'might-Counterfactuals - 1999 - Faith and Philosophy 16:336-351.
  3. A Lottery Paradox for Counterfactuals Without Agglomeration.Hannes Leitgeb - 2013 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 89 (3):605-636.
    We will present a new lottery-style paradox on counterfactuals and chance. The upshot will be: combining natural assumptions on the truth values of ordinary counterfactuals, the conditional chances of possible but non-actual events, the manner in which and relate to each other, and a fragment of the logic of counterfactuals leads to disaster. In contrast with the usual lottery-style paradoxes, logical closure under conjunction—that is, in this case, the rule of Agglomeration of counterfactuals—will not play a (...)
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  4. 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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  5. Facts and counterfactuals in economic law.Jörg Guido Hülsmann - 200 - Journal of Libertarian Studies 17 (1):57-102.
  6. Philosophical knowledge and knowledge of counterfactuals.Timothy Williamson - 2007 - Grazer Philosophische Studien 74 (1):89-123.
    Metaphysical modalities are definable from counterfactual conditionals, and the epistemology of the former is a special case of the epistemology of the latter. In particular, the role of conceivability and inconceivability in assessing claims of possibility and impossibility can be explained as a special case of the pervasive role of the imagination in assessing counterfactual conditionals, an account of which is sketched. Thus scepticism about metaphysical modality entails a more far-reaching scepticism about counterfactuals. The account is used to question (...)
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  7. A counterexample to the Stalnaker-Lewis analysis of counterfactuals.Pavel Tichý - 1976 - Philosophical Studies 29 (4):271 - 273.
  8. The Use and Misuse of Counterfactuals in Ethical Machine Learning.Atoosa Kasirzadeh & Andrew Smart - 2021 - In Atoosa Kasirzadeh & Andrew Smart, ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT 21).
    The use of counterfactuals for considerations of algorithmic fairness and explainability is gaining prominence within the machine learning community and industry. This paper argues for more caution with the use of counterfactuals when the facts to be considered are social categories such as race or gender. We review a broad body of papers from philosophy and social sciences on social ontology and the semantics of counterfactuals, and we conclude that the counterfactual approach in machine learning fairness and (...)
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  9. Ordering semantics and premise semantics for counterfactuals.David Lewis - 1981 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 10 (2):217-234.
  10. (1 other version)Physical modality, laws, and counterfactuals.James Woodward - 2017 - Synthese 197 (5):1907–1929.
    Standard philosophical accounts attempt to understand physical modality either in terms of special metaphysical entities and relationships or in terms of the organization of non-modal information, as in Best Systems Analysis. This paper defends an alternative to both these approaches in which invariance and various independence conditions play a central role. The methodological importance of separating law-claims from claims about initial and boundary conditions is highlighted.
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  11. The similarity approach to counterfactuals: Some problems.G. Lee Bowie - 1979 - Noûs 13 (4):477-498.
  12. Anti-essentialism, modal relativity, and alternative material-origin counterfactuals.Frederique Janssen-Lauret - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):8379-8398.
    In ordinary language, in the medical sciences, and in the overlap between them, we frequently make claims which imply that we might have had different gametic origins from the ones we actually have. Such statements seem intuitively true and coherent. But they counterfactually ascribe different DNA to their referents and therefore contradict material-origin essentialism, which Kripke and his followers argue is intuitively obvious. In this paper I argue, using examples from ordinary language and from philosophy of medicine and bioethics, that (...)
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  13. Even, still and counterfactuals.Stephen Barker - 1991 - Linguistics and Philosophy 14 (1):1 - 38.
  14. Conditional obligation and counterfactuals.Judith DeCew - 1981 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 10 (1):55 - 72.
  15. Counterfactuals.David K. Lewis - 1973 - Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.
    Counterfactuals is David Lewis' forceful presentation of and sustained argument for a particular view about propositions which express contrary to fact conditionals, including his famous defense of realism about possible worlds and his theory of laws of nature.
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  16.  83
    David Lewis and the analysis of counterfactuals.Donald Nute - 1976 - Noûs 10 (3):355-361.
  17.  15
    Counterfactualism in fine arts.Elke Reinhuber - 2023 - New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
    Counterfactual thinking has become an established method to evaluate decisions in a range of disciplines, including history, psychology and literature. Elke Reinhuber argues it also has valuable applications in the Fine Arts and popular media. A fascination with the path not taken is a logical consequence of a world saturated with choices. Art which provokes and explores these tendencies can help to recognise and contextualise the impulse to avoid or endlessly revisit individual or collective decisions. Reinhuber describes the term in (...)
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  18. Backward causation and the Stalnaker-Lewis approach to counterfactuals.Michael Tooley - 2002 - Analysis 62 (3):191-197.
  19.  14
    Construction of Irreality: An Enactive-Constructivist Stance on Counterfactuals.Andrey S. Druzhinin - 2020 - Constructivist Foundations 16 (1):069-080.
    Context: Linguists and philosophers, as well as psychologists, have not yet offered a coherent explanation of the logic behind the intricate grammar of counterfactuals, the meaning of irreality and….
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  20.  66
    An event algebra for causal counterfactuals.Tomasz Wysocki - 2023 - Philosophical Studies 180 (12):3533-3565.
    “If the tower is any taller than 320 ms, it may collapse,” Eiffel thinks out loud. Although understanding this counterfactual poses no trouble, the most successful interventionist semantics struggle to model it because the antecedent can come about in infinitely many ways. My aim is to provide a semantics that will make modeling such counterfactuals easy for philosophers, computer scientists, and cognitive scientists who work on causation and causal reasoning. I first propose three desiderata that will guide my theory: (...)
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  21. Benardete’s paradox and the logic of counterfactuals.Michael Caie - 2018 - Analysis 78 (1):22-34.
    I consider a puzzling case presented by Jose Benardete, and by appeal to this case develop a paradox involving counterfactual conditionals. I then show that this paradox may be leveraged to argue for certain non-obvious claims concerning the logic of counterfactuals.
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  22. Counterfactual Attitudes and the Relational Analysis.Kyle Blumberg - 2018 - Mind 127 (506):521-546.
    In this paper, I raise a problem for standard precisifications of the Relational Analysis of attitude reports. The problem I raise involves counterfactual attitude verbs. such as ‘wish’. In short, the trouble is this: there are true attitude reports ‘ S wishes that P ’ but there is no suitable referent for the term ‘that P ’. The problematic reports illustrate that the content of a subject’s wish is intimately related to the content of their beliefs. I capture this fact (...)
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  23. Free choice permission and the counterfactuals of pragmatics.Melissa Fusco - 2014 - Linguistics and Philosophy 37 (4):275-290.
    This paper addresses a little puzzle with a surprisingly long pedigree and a surprisingly large wake: the puzzle of Free Choice Permission. I begin by presenting a popular sketch of a pragmatic solution to the puzzle, due to Kratzer and Shimoyama, which has received a good deal of discussion, endorsement and elaboration in recent work :535–590, 2006; Fox, in: Sauerland and Stateva Presupposition and implicature in compositional semantics, 2007; Geurts, Mind Lang 24:51–79, 2009; von Fintel, Central APA session on Deontic (...)
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  24. Could God Have Made the Big Bang? (On Theistic Counterfactuals).Duncan Macintosh - 1994 - Dialogue 33 (1):3-20.
    Quentin Smith argues that if God exists, He had a duty to ensure life's existence; and He couldn't rationally have done so and made a big bang unless a counter-factual like "If God had made a big bang, there would have been life," was true pre-creation. But such counter-factuals are not true pre-creation. I argue that God could have made a big bang without irrationality; and that He could have ensured life without making big bangs non-random. Further, a proper understanding (...)
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  25.  34
    Counterfactuals and Probability.Moritz Schulz - 2017 - Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
    Moritz Schulz explores counterfactual thought and language: what would have happened if things had gone a different way. Counterfactual questions may concern large scale derivations or small scale evaluations of minor derivations. A common impression, which receives a thorough defence in the book, is that oftentimes we find it impossible to know what would have happened. However, this does not mean that we are completely at a loss: we are typically capable of evaluating counterfactual questions probabilistically: we can say what (...)
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  26. Conjunctions, Disjunctions and Lewisian Semantics for Counterfactuals.Alexander R. Pruss - 2007 - Synthese 156 (1):33-52.
    Consider the reasonable axioms of subjunctive conditionals if p → q1 and p → q2 at some world, then p → at that world, and if p1 → q and p2 → q at some world, then → q at that world, where p → q is the subjunctive conditional. I show that a Lewis-style semantics for subjunctive conditionals satisfies these axioms if and only if one makes a certain technical assumption about the closeness relation, an assumption that is probably (...)
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  27. Time-Symmetrised Quantum Theory, Counterfactuals and ‘Advanced Action’.R. E. Kastner - 1999 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 30 (2):237-259.
  28.  26
    In Defense of Anti-Haecceitism: Chance and Counterfactuals.Tomasz Bigaj - forthcoming - Erkenntnis:1-15.
    Boris Kment formulates two challenges to anti-haecceitism: one based on the concept of chance, and the other involving counterfactuals. In this paper I refute the chance-based argument by appropriately reformulating its premises in a non-individualistic language. Regarding the argument from counterfactuals I consider three strategies of defense. The strategy that is ultimately accepted as most promising is a revamped approach based on the distinction between possible worlds and possibilities. I counter Kment’s claim that the introduction of fine-grained possibilities (...)
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  29. Non-Analytic Tableaux for Chellas's Conditional Logic CK and Lewis's Logic of Counterfactuals VC.Richard Zach - 2018 - Australasian Journal of Logic 15 (3):609-628.
    Priest has provided a simple tableau calculus for Chellas's conditional logic Ck. We provide rules which, when added to Priest's system, result in tableau calculi for Chellas's CK and Lewis's VC. Completeness of these tableaux, however, relies on the cut rule.
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  30.  51
    Modality and Counterfactuals: Understanding the Role and Context of Metaphysical Underpinnings for Harm, Benefit and Identity Claims Arising from Genome Editing and Genetic Modification.Anthony Wrigley - 2022 - American Journal of Bioethics 22 (9):52-54.
    Deriving ethical conclusions from arguments that rely heavily on metaphysical foundations, as Parfit (1984) does in generating his Nonidentity Problem, is an approach fraught with problems. Sparrow...
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  31.  74
    Where would we be without counterfactuals?Huw Price - unknown
    Bertrand Russell’s celebrated essay “On the Notion of Cause” was first delivered to the Aristotelian Society on 4 November 1912, as Russell’s Presidential Address. The piece is best known for a passage in which its author deftly positions himself between the traditional metaphysics of causation and the British crown, firing broadsides in both directions: “The law of causality”, Russell declares, “Like much that passes muster in philosophy, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it (...)
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  32. Overdetermination, Counterfactuals, and Mental Causation.Chiwook Won - 2014 - Philosophical Review 123 (2):205-229.
    The overdetermination problem has long been raised as a challenge to nonreductive physicalism. Nonreductive physicalists have, in various ways, tried to resolve the problem through appeal to counterfactuals. This essay does two things. First, it takes up the question whether counterfactuals can yield an appropriate notion of causal redundancy and argues for a negative answer. Second, it examines how this issue bears on the mental causation debate. In particular, it considers the argument that the overdetermination problem simply does (...)
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  33.  61
    Counterfactual discrimination.D. C. Matthew - 2017 - South African Journal of Philosophy 36 (4):495-504.
    In counterfactual cases of discrimination, an agent would have treated someone worse had circumstances been different such that instead of being a member of her actual group, she was a member of some other group. The case for considering such cases to be genuine cases of discrimination is bolstered by the fact that we are inclined to say that cases where an agent would have treated someone better had she been a member of another group are discriminatory. But I argue (...)
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  34. Counterfactual Attitudes and Multi-Centered Worlds.Dilip Ninan - 2012 - Semantics and Pragmatics 5 (5):1-57.
    Counterfactual attitudes like imagining, dreaming, and wishing create a problem for the standard formal semantic theory of de re attitude ascriptions. I show how the problem can be avoided if we represent an agent's attitudinal possibilities using "multi-centered worlds", possible worlds with multiple distinguished individuals, each of which represents an individual with whom the agent is acquainted. I then present a compositional semantics for de re ascriptions according to which singular terms are "assignment-sensitive" expressions and attitude verbs are "assignment shifters".
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  35.  45
    On the Function and Nature of Historical Counterfactuals. Clarifying Confusions.Veli Virmajoki - 2024 - Journal of the Philosophy of History 19 (1):80-104.
    In this article, I analyze historical counterfactuals. Historical counterfactuals are conditional statements in which the antecedent refers to some change in the past. We ask what would have happened, had that change occurred. I discuss the nature of such counterfactuals. I then identify important functions that historical counterfactuals have. I point out that they are at the heart of explanations and, therefore, reveal issues related to contingency and actual history. I then discuss counterfactual reasoning in historiography. (...)
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  36. The logic of counterfactuals in causal inference.Judea Pearl - manuscript
  37. Laws, modalities and counterfactuals.Wesley C. Salmon - 1977 - Synthese 35 (2):191-229.
  38. Leibniz on God’s Knowledge of Counterfactuals.Michael V. Griffin - 1999 - Philosophical Review 108 (3):317-343.
    In the eleventh chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says to the inhabitants of Bethsaida and Corozain: “If the miracles worked in you had taken place in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes”. Passages like this support a scriptural argument for God’s knowledge of counterfactuals about created individuals. In the sixteenth century, Jesuits and Dominicans vigorously debated about how to explain this knowledge. The Jesuits, notably Luis de Molina and Francisco Suarez, argued that (...)
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  39. (1 other version)Laws and Other Worlds. A Humean Account of Laws and Counterfactuals.Fred Wilson - 1989 - Studia Logica 48 (2):261-262.
  40.  67
    Laws and counterfactuals.Leonard I. Krimerman - 1965 - Philosophical Studies 16 (3):40 - 44.
  41.  25
    Quixotic Reasoning: Counterfactuals, Causation and Literary Storyworlds.Karin Kukkonen - 2014 - Paragraph 37 (1):47-61.
    Bayesian probability calculus has recently emerged as a model for how the mind learns about fictional and cultural environments. This essay considers reading a narrative as a process of learning about the probabilities of the fictional world and explores two novels about Quixotic readers from a Bayesian perspective. The juxtaposition of the fictional and the real, which the standard understanding of the Quixote relies on, is replaced by an outline of the dynamics of the learning process in Quixotes who already (...)
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  42.  66
    Non-strict Interventionism: The Case Of Right-Nested Counterfactuals.Katrin Schulz, Sonja Smets, Fernando R. Velázquez-Quesada & Kaibo Xie - 2022 - Journal of Logic, Language and Information 31 (2):235-260.
    The paper focuses on a recent challenge brought forward against the interventionist approach to the meaning of counterfactual conditionals. According to this objection, interventionism cannot account for the interpretation of right-nested counterfactuals, the problem being its strict interventionism. We will report on the results of an empirical study supporting the objection. Furthermore, we will extend the well-known logic of intervention with a new operator expressing an alternative notion of intervention that does away with strict interventionism. This new notion of (...)
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  43. Causal preemption and counterfactuals.Martin Bunzl - 1980 - Philosophical Studies 37 (2):115 - 124.
  44. Causal overdetermination and counterfactuals revisited.Louis E. Loeb - 1977 - Philosophical Studies 31 (3):211 - 214.
  45.  98
    Stretched lines, averted leaps, and excluded competition: A theory of scientific counterfactuals.Gregory M. Mikkelson - 1996 - Philosophy of Science 63 (3):201.
    Lewis' argument against the Limit Assumption and Pollock's Generalized Consequence Principle together suggest that "minimal-change" theories of counterfactuals are wrong. The "small-change" theories presented by Nute do not say enough. While these theories rely on closeness between possible worlds, I base an alternative on the ceteris paribus concept. My theory solves a problem that the above cannot, and is more relevant to the philosophy of science. Ceteris paribus conditions should normally include the causes, but exclude the effects, of the (...)
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  46. I-Counterfactuals.Dorothy Edgington - 2008 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 108 (1pt1):1-21.
    I argue that the suppositional view of conditionals, which is quite popular for indicative conditionals, extends also to subjunctive or counterfactual conditionals. According to this view, conditional judgements should not be construed as factual, categorical judgements, but as judgements about the consequent under the supposition of the antecedent. The strongest evidence for the view comes from focusing on the fact that conditional judgements are often uncertain; and conditional uncertainty, which is a well-understood notion, does not function like uncertainty about matters (...)
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  47.  60
    A Defence of Functional Kinds: Multiple Realisability and Explanatory Counterfactuals.Gareth Fuller - 2022 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 35 (2):119-133.
    In this paper, I defend an updated account of functional kinds, initially presented by Daniel Weiskopf, from the criticism that functional kinds will not qualify as scientific kinds. An important part of Weiskopf’s account is that functional kinds are multiply realisable. The criticisms I consider avoid discussion of multiple realisability. Instead, it is argued that functional kinds carry inferior counterfactual profiles when compared to other accounts of kinds. I respond to this charge by arguing that this criticism fails to take (...)
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  48. Counterfactual Causation and Mental Causation.Jens Harbecke - 2014 - Philosophia 42 (2):363-385.
    Counterfactual conditionals have been appealed to in various ways to show how the mind can be causally efficacious. However, it has often been overestimated what the truth of certain counterfactuals actually indicates about causation. The paper first identifies four approaches that seem to commit precisely this mistake. The arguments discussed involve erroneous assumptions about the connection of counterfactual dependence and genuine causation, as well as a disregard of the requisite evaluation conditions of counterfactuals. In a second step, the (...)
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  49. Counterfactuals and the Epistemology of Modality.Thomas Kroedel - 2012 - Philosophers' Imprint 12.
    The paper provides an explanation of our knowledge of metaphysical modality, or modal knowledge, from our ability to evaluate counterfactual conditionals. The latter ability lends itself to an evolutionary explanation since it enables us to learn from mistakes. Different logical principles linking counterfactuals to metaphysical modality can be employed to extend this explanation to the epistemology of modality. While the epistemological use of some of these principles is either philosophically implausible or empirically inadequate, the equivalence of ‘Necessarily p’ with (...)
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  50. Theory- versus imagination-driven thinking about historical counterfactuals: are we prisoners of our preconceptions?Philip E. Tetlock & Erika Henik - 2005 - In David R. Mandel, Denis J. Hilton & Patrizia Catellani, The psychology of counterfactual thinking. New York: Routledge.
     
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