Counterfactuals in pragmatic perspective

Review of Metaphysics

Volumn 50, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 35-61

  Rescher, Nicholas ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH   (United States)

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EID: 0040753606     PISSN: 00346632     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (34)

1. In particular, counterfactuals are essential to the clarification and explanation of issues relating to matters of causality, natural lawfulness, and freedom of the will.
2. For a gripping account of current controversy in this area see Jim Holt, "Whose Idea is it Anyway?, A Philosophers' Feud," Lingua Franca 4, no. 1 (January/February 1996): 29-39.
3. See G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and Malcolm Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers, frag. 15, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 169; Clement, Stromata, v, 109, 3.
4. See G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and Malcolm Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers, frag. 15, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 169; Clement, Stromata, v. 109, 3.
5. The Presocratic Philosophers, frag. 38, p. 180.
6. Ibid., frag. 34, p. 179.
7. John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, frag. 1817, 4th ed. (London: Methuen, 1930), 133. The fragments of Heraclitus are here numbered in the order: Diels/Bywater. I have generally adopted Bywater's translation as improved by Burnet. See also G. S. Kirk, Heraclitus: The Cosmic Fragments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954).
8. John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, frag. 1817, 4th ed. (London: Methuen, 1930), 133. The fragments of Heraclitus are here numbered in the order: Diels/Bywater. I have generally adopted Bywater's translation as improved by Burnet. See also G. S. Kirk, Heraclitus: The Cosmic Fragments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954).
9. Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, frag. 9/51, p. 137.
10. Ibid., frag. 99/31, p. 135.
11. For further detail see Nicholas Rescher, "Thought Experimentation in Presocratic Philosophy," in his Essays in the History of Philosophy (Aldershot, UK Avebury, 1995), 27-38.
12. The possible-worlds approach to counterfactuals was pioneered in Robert Stalnacker, "A Theory of Conditionals," in Studies in Logical Theory, ed. Nicholas Rescher (Oxford: Blackwell, 1968), 98-112. Its principal development is in David Lewis, Counterfactuals (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973) and Donald Nute, Topics in Conditional Logic (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1980). For a useful anthology of relevant discussions see Ernest Sosa, ed., Causation and Conditionals (Oxford: Oxford University 1975).
13. The possible-worlds approach to counterfactuals was pioneered in Robert Stalnacker, "A Theory of Conditionals," in Studies in Logical Theory, ed. Nicholas Rescher (Oxford: Blackwell, 1968), 98-112. Its principal development is in David Lewis, Counterfactuals (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973) and Donald Nute, Topics in Conditional Logic (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1980). For a useful anthology of relevant discussions see Ernest Sosa, ed., Causation and Conditionals (Oxford: Oxford University 1975).
14. The possible-worlds approach to counterfactuals was pioneered in Robert Stalnacker, "A Theory of Conditionals," in Studies in Logical Theory, ed. Nicholas Rescher (Oxford: Blackwell, 1968), 98-112. Its principal development is in David Lewis, Counterfactuals (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973) and Donald Nute, Topics in Conditional Logic (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1980). For a useful anthology of relevant discussions see Ernest Sosa, ed., Causation and Conditionals (Oxford: Oxford University 1975).
15. The possible-worlds approach to counterfactuals was pioneered in Robert Stalnacker, "A Theory of Conditionals," in Studies in Logical Theory, ed. Nicholas Rescher (Oxford: Blackwell, 1968), 98-112. Its principal development is in David Lewis, Counterfactuals (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973) and Donald Nute, Topics in Conditional Logic (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1980). For a useful anthology of relevant discussions see Ernest Sosa, ed., Causation and Conditionals (Oxford: Oxford University 1975).
16. For David Lewis's position see his books Counterfactuals and On the Plurality of Worlds (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986). Lewis goes to great lengths to maintain that his treatment of counterfactuals does not require a metrically structured manifold of degrees of similarity among possible worlds but only the machinery of comparison that makes it possible to indicate that one world is more similar to a second than it is to a third. (There is no need for a measure of how much more similar.) But even this is a very strong requirement. Similarity comes in respects and there is no way in general of transforming this into an overall aggregate. Take colored and scented geometric shapes, for example. We can say unproblematically that two of them are more similar than to a third to another in a given aspect - say in area or shape, in color or odor. But the idea of an all-in, everything considered similarity, is beyond the prospect of plausible implementation.
17. His commitment to this aporetic approach dates back to the author's 1961 paper on "Belief-Contravening Suppositions," The Philosophical Review, 70 (1961): 176-96. It was developed further in Hypothetical Reasoning (Amsterdam: D. Reidel, 1964), and also Plausible Reasoning (Assen and Amsterdam: Van Gorcum, 1976). I was motivated to return to the issue of counterfactual reasoning through discussions with Eduardo Flichman which contributed helpfully to the clarification of several points in the present paper.
18. His commitment to this aporetic approach dates back to the author's 1961 paper on "Belief-Contravening Suppositions," The Philosophical Review, 70 (1961): 176-96. It was developed further in Hypothetical Reasoning (Amsterdam: D. Reidel, 1964), and also Plausible Reasoning (Assen and Amsterdam: Van Gorcum, 1976). I was motivated to return to the issue of counterfactual reasoning through discussions with Eduardo Flichman which contributed helpfully to the clarification of several points in the present paper.
19. His commitment to this aporetic approach dates back to the author's 1961 paper on "Belief-Contravening Suppositions," The Philosophical Review, 70 (1961): 176-96. It was developed further in Hypothetical Reasoning (Amsterdam: D. Reidel, 1964), and also Plausible Reasoning (Assen and Amsterdam: Van Gorcum, 1976). I was motivated to return to the issue of counterfactual reasoning through discussions with Eduardo Flichman which contributed helpfully to the clarification of several points in the present paper.
20. It seems sensible and appropriate to render Greek aporia as English apory, on analogy with harmony, melody, and indeed analogy itself.
21. On these issues see Nicholas Rescher, Induction (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980).
22. Kant wrote: "Now wonder is a shock of the moral sense, arising from the incompatibility of a representation . . . with the principles already lying at its basis, which provokes a doubt as to whether we have rightly seen or rightly judged"; Critique of Judgment, sect. 62, trans. J. H. Bernard (London: Macmillan, 1892), 211. Our present construction of the term generalizes this overly narrow construal to include a conflict of "beliefs" as well as one of "representations."
23. To be sure, philosophers positioned in different experiential contexts will accomplish this differently. Their judgments of priority are bound to differ.
24. The aporetic nature of philosophy and its implications are explored in detail in Nicholas Rescher, The Strife of Systems (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985).
25. The context-dependent nature of the project of conflict resolution means the aporetic approach is able to unify important aspects of the theory of reasoning in every different domains (proof theory, empirical inquiry, hypothetical reasoning, philosophical reasoning) within a single overarching integrating perspective. This unification integrates the author's approach to these various issues in such books as Hypothetical Reasoning (1967), Plausible Reasoning (1974), Empirical Inquiry (1982), and The Strife of Systems (1985), and thereby unifies in a synoptic perspective the pragmatic tendency of my overall position.
26. The context-dependent nature of the project of conflict resolution means the aporetic approach is able to unify important aspects of the theory of reasoning in every different domains (proof theory, empirical inquiry, hypothetical reasoning, philosophical reasoning) within a single overarching integrating perspective. This unification integrates the author's approach to these various issues in such books as Hypothetical Reasoning (1967), Plausible Reasoning (1974), Empirical Inquiry (1982), and The Strife of Systems (1985), and thereby unifies in a synoptic perspective the pragmatic tendency of my overall position.
27. The context-dependent nature of the project of conflict resolution means the aporetic approach is able to unify important aspects of the theory of reasoning in every different domains (proof theory, empirical inquiry, hypothetical reasoning, philosophical reasoning) within a single overarching integrating perspective. This unification integrates the author's approach to these various issues in such books as Hypothetical Reasoning (1967), Plausible Reasoning (1974), Empirical Inquiry (1982), and The Strife of Systems (1985), and thereby unifies in a synoptic perspective the pragmatic tendency of my overall position.
28. The context-dependent nature of the project of conflict resolution means the aporetic approach is able to unify important aspects of the theory of reasoning in every different domains (proof theory, empirical inquiry, hypothetical reasoning, philosophical reasoning) within a single overarching integrating perspective. This unification integrates the author's approach to these various issues in such books as Hypothetical Reasoning (1967), Plausible Reasoning (1974), Empirical Inquiry (1982), and The Strife of Systems (1985), and thereby unifies in a synoptic perspective the pragmatic tendency of my overall position.
29. In the setting of our present approach, we have the following accepted propositions: (1) Four is not greater than five. (2) The consistency of arithmetic [as we know it] entails (1). (3) Arithmetic is - and ought to be-consistent. If not-(1) were to be assumed, then we would be forced into an abandonment of either (2) or (3), seeing that the trio is logically inconsistent. Since there is no viable way around (2), this means that we would have to give up (3) and see arithmetic as involved in contradiction. And this validates the counterfactual under consideration.
30. To question the appropriateness of possible worlds is not automatically to gainsay the semantical utility of scenarios in semantical analysis -that is, fictions that characterize possible courses of events in ways that are fragmentary and incomplete in their overall bearing. Compare, for example, the analysis of imperatives in Nicholas Rescher, The Logic of Commands (London: Routledge, 1969).
31. W. V. Quine, "On What There Is," The Review of Metaphysics 2, no. 5 (September 1948): 21-38 reprinted in his From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953), 1-19.
32. W. V. Quine, "On What There Is," The Review of Metaphysics 2, no. 5 (September 1948): 21-38 reprinted in his From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953), 1-19.
33. Just this was the approach of the author's A Theory of Possibility (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975).
34. For further details regarding pragmatics vs. semantics in the context of the important distinction between truth-conditions and use-conditions see chapter 1, "Meaning and Assertability," in Nicholas Rescher, Empirical Inquiry (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1982).