Now Playing: COUNTERFACTUALS WEEK (REPOSTED FOR THE 2ND TIME)
Topic: Counterfactuals
COUNTERFACTUALS WITH TRUE COMPONENTS
By Alan Penczek
One criticism of David Lewis' account of counterfactuals is that it sometimes assigns the wrong truth-value to a counterfactual when both antecedent and consequent happen to be true. Lewis has suggested a possible remedy to this situation, but commentators have found this to be unsatisfactory. I suggest an alternative solution which involves a modification of Lewis' truth conditions, but which confines itself to the resources already present in his account. This modification involves the device of embedding one counterfactual within another. On the revised set of truth conditions, counterfactuals with true components are sometimes true and sometimes false, in a way that is more in keeping with our intuitive judgments about such statements.
Source: Erkenntnis, Volume 46, Number 1, January 1997, Pages: 79 - 85
First reposted on March the 11th, 2005
Posted by Tony Marmo
at 00:01 GMT
Updated: Wednesday, 11 January 2006 04:38 GMT
