Table Of ContentMIMESIS
INTERNATIONAL
LITERATURE/LANGUAGE
n. 3
D D
aniel ohrn
COUNTERFACTUAL
CONDITIONALS
Orthodoxy and Its Challenges
MIMESIS
INTERNATIONAL
This book has been published with the subsidy of the German Research Foundation,
Research Group 1614.
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Isbn: 9788869773037
Book series: Literature/Language, n. 3
© MIM Edizioni Srl
P.I. C.F. 02419370305
CONTENTS
introDuction
counterfactual conDitionals in the PhilosoPhy of language 7
1. the Basics 11
1.1.Goodman and the Problem of Cotenability 11
1.2. Minimal Difference/Divergence/Departure:
The Stalnaker–Lewis Semantics 15
1.2.1. Stalnaker 15
1.2.2. Sobel and Similarity: Lewis 21
1.2.3. Orthodoxy à la Kratzer 35
2. challenges to orthoDoxy 37
2.1. Logics 37
2.2. Challenging Truth–Conditions: Gibbard Cases 43
2.3. Probabilities 55
2.3.1. Proposals in the Literature 55
2.3.1.1. Schulz’s Arbitrariness Account 55
2.3.1.2. Barnett’s Suppositional Account 64
2.3.2. A New Proposal: Non–Maximality 81
2.4 Problems with Similarity 102
2.4.1. Morgenbesser Case 103
2.4.2. World Convergence Made Easy:
The Future Similarity Objection 118
2.4.2.1 Elga Worlds 120
2.4.2.2 Bennett Worlds 142
2.5. Typicality 158
2.6. Will and Were 190
3. conclusion 205
literature 207
INTRODUCTION
COUNTERFACTUAL CONDITIONALS IN
THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE
There is an intense debate in the philosophy of language and
linguistics on so-called counterfactual conditionals. I shall introduce
what I take to be the standard view:
First, counterfactuals have truth–conditions.
Second, these truth–conditions can be spelled out in terms of possible
worlds.
Third, the possible worlds deciding on the truth or falsity of a
counterfactual are those that minimally differ from the actual world.
Then I shall point out selected challenges to the standard view. I shall
discuss proposals how to deal with these challenges within and outside
of the standard semantics. I am especially interested in discussing in
how far the standard view can be preserved and amended in a friendly
way. I do not aim at comprehensively covering the main topics in the
debate. Given how huge and complicated the debate has become, any
selection is inevitably idiosyncratic. I admit that my selection could be
more balanced. It is guided by my personal interests and my intellectual
biography. The most salient lacuna may be that I set aside the highly
important debate on counterfactuals and causal modeling. Another
imbalance is that I focus on details of particular positions. My defence
is that the positions discussed are paradigmatic. Delving into these
positions in some detail, I aim at sharpening our sensitivities for the
level of details at which the pertinent problems have to be tackled. I
hope to give the reader some idea of the complexity of the issues
involved and to motivate her to further pursue the topics considered,
filling the gaps my discussion has left.
Besides my research interests in the philosophy of language, I am
also interested in the history of philosophy. One of the main reasons
8 Counterfactual Conditionals
why I take the history of philosophy to be interesting is that it allows us
to appreciate why certain issues rouse to salience as contrasted to other
issues that might as well merit our interest; why certain background
assumptions and methodological presuppositions became commonly
shared as contrasted to others that might as well be true and relevant;
and how these salient issues and background assumptions shaped the
development of the debate. I shall use this book as an opportunity to
deepen my perspective by a historical dimension. I am not only
interested in following the main arguments, but also in the meanderings
that gave rise to the richness and variety of current debate.
The book is divided into two parts. The first part (1.) is mainly
reconstructive. I survey the development that has led to the standard
account. I construe this development as driven by one main issue:
motivating general truth–conditions for counterfactuals. My main aim
is to identify the critical breaking points at which the problems outlined
in the second part arise. I shall focus on four paradigmatic accounts:
Goodman’s discovery of what he calls the problem of cotenability,
Stalnaker’s version of the standard semantics, Lewis’s refinements of
Stalnaker’s version, and eventually Kratzer’s integration of the standard
account into a more general semantics for modal expressions.1
The second part (2.) is more original, comprising research on the
problems identified in the first part. Again I emphasize that I do not aim
at being exhaustive. Rather I focus on highly selective interventions at
particular neuralgic points in the debate. My selective interventions
illustrate the pertinent problems and exemplary ways of reacting to
them. I shall give an overview of my interventions.
I shall start with the logics that was an important achievement of
Lewis’s version of the standard account. That logics invalidates certain
principles which hold e.g. for simple material conditionals, in particular
transitivity, strengthening the antecedent, and contraposition. In section
(2.1.) I consider an exemplary attempt at restoring these principles. My
second intervention concerns the assumption that counterfactuals have
truth–conditions. In section (2.2.), I consider whether Gibbard’s
counterexamples, which are purported to show that indicative
1 Nelson Goodman, ‘The Problem of Counterfactual Conditionals’, The Journal
of Philosophy, 44 (1947), 113–128; Robert Stalnaker, ‘A Theory of
Conditionals’, Studies in Logical Theory. American Philosophical Quarterly
Monograph, 2 (1968), 98–112; David Lewis, Counterfactuals (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1973); Angelika Kratzer, ‘Modality’, in Semantics, ed. by Arnim
von Stechow and Dieter Wunderlich (Berlin: DeGruyter, 1991), pp. 639-650.
Counterfactual Conditionals in the Philosophy of Language 9
conditionals lack truth–conditions, can be transferred to counterfactuals.
The third challenge to be considered arises from the interaction of
counterfactuals and probability. In (2.3.) I shall present some
problematic intuitions about counterfactuals with ‘probably’. I shall
discuss (2.3.1.) two paradigmatic semantics which accommodate such
intuitions before introducing (2.3.2.) my own proposal, which preserves
the letter of the standard account. In section (2.4.), I shall address the
notorious future similarity objection to Lewis’s proposal how to
measure minimal divergence from the actual world. Among the
ramifications of the future similarity objection, I shall discuss
Morgenbesser cases in section (2.4.1.) and problems with further
counterexamples to Lewis’s similarity metrics in the sections (2.4.2.)
and (2.4.3.). The latter counterexamples all deal with Lewis’s claim that
antecedent worlds easily diverge from but not so easily converge on the
actual world. In section (2.5.), I shall further discuss issues about
minimally diverging worlds, in particular what happens if these worlds
turn out to be relevantly ‘deviant’ or atypical. I close with discussing
intricacies of future-directed ‘would’ in section (2.6.). As indicated, the
thrust of my debate is to see in how far we can preserve the cherished
standard semantics as summarized in section (1.), and where the
breaking points might be.
