Counterfactual reasoning and the problem of selecting antecedent scenarios

A recent group of social scientists have argued that counterfactual questions play an essential role in their disciplines, and that it is possible to have rigorous methods to investigate them. Unfortunately, there has been little (if any) interaction between these social scientists and the philosophers who have long held that rigorous counterfactual reasoning is possible. In this paper, I hope to encourage some fresh thinking on both sides by creating new connections between them. I describe what I term “problem of selecting antecedent scenarios,” and show that this is an essential challenge in real-life counterfactual reasoning. Then, I demonstrate that the major extant theories of counterfactuals (especially the Lewis/Stalnaker theory and Igal Kvart’s rival account) are unable to solve this problem. I show that there are instances of real-life counterfactual reasoning in the social sciences that are counterexamples to both of these accounts. And finally, I develop a new theory of how to select antecedent scenarios that overcomes these difficulties, and so would be part of a more adequate theory of counterfactuals (and counterfactual reasoning).     

Who you could have known: divine hiddenness,epistemic counterfactuals,and the recalcitrant nature of natural theology

We argue there is a deep conflict in Paul Moser’s work on divine hiddenness (DH). Moser’s treatment of DH adopts a thesis we call SEEK: DH often results from failing to seek God on His terms. One way in which people err, according to Moser, is by trusting arguments of traditional natural theology to lead to filial knowledge of God. We argue that Moser’s SEEK thesis commits him to the counterfactual ACCESS: had the atheist sought after God in harmony with how God reveals himself, she would have had access to filial knowledge of God. By failing to incorporate arguments or propositional evidence for God’s existence, Moser’s account leaves the doubting seeker without any evidential reason to think that either SEEK or ACCESS is true. Without this rational motivation in place, the doubting seeker is unlikely to seek after God in the way ACCESS describes. We argue that natural theology provides an evidential epistemic aid to motivate persons to seek God the way ACCESS describes. Thus, Moser is mistaken. Such arguments can be evidentially helpful in coming to know God. In conclusion, we explain how our reply naturally fits how we form and maintain trusting interpersonal relationships with others.     

Truth and falsity in group

The universal tension and juxtaposition between truth seeking and truth evasion are explored in a contemporary relational context, drawing on Bion 's later ideas on group. Bion's key idea of "psi," or psychic evasiveness, refocuses group theory, supplementing intra- and inter-psychic perspectives with sociopolitical analysis. To some extent the psychotherapy group exists as a political "Establishment" and thus corresponds to psi. Using three illustrative case examples, the nature and nurture of truth evasion is considered, along with the purposes it serves and the forms it may take. The therapist must maintain a disruptive-creative influence on group process, but like other group members, he or she instead may accept and promote falsity. Whereas the therapist ensures the integrity of the culture, the members, and not solely the therapist, break up old relational patterns and experiment with new ones. Dynamic, evolving groups aid the leader in life-affirming truth-seeking, eventually challenging establishment tendencies and exposing falsity.     

Causes and nested counterfactuals

Book Information Singer and His Critics. Singer and His Critics Dale Jamieson Oxford Blackwell Press 1999 368 Hardback £50.00 Paperback £15.99 Edited by Dale Jamieson. Blackwell Press. Oxford. Pp. 368. Hardback:£50.00; Paperback:£15.99,     

Propositional epistemic luck,epistemic risk,and epistemic justification

If a subject has a true belief, and she has good evidence for it, and there’s no evidence against it, why should it matter if she doesn’t believe on the basis of the good available evidence? After all, properly based beliefs are no likelier to be true than their corresponding improperly based beliefs, as long as the subject possesses the same good evidence in both cases. And yet it clearly does matter. The aim of this paper is to explain why, and in the process delineate a species of epistemic luck that has hitherto gone unnoticed—what we call propositional epistemic luck—but which we claim is crucial to accounting for the importance of proper basing. As we will see, in order to understand why this type of epistemic luck is malignant, we also need to reflect on the relationship between epistemic luck and epistemic risk.     

Strategic behavior and counterfactuals

The difficulty of defining rational behavior in game situations is that the players' strategies will depend on their expectations about other players' strategies. These expectations are beliefs the players come to the game with. Game theorists assume these beliefs to be rational in the very special sense of beingobjectively correct but no explanation is offered of the mechanism generating this property of the belief system. In many interesting cases, however, such a rationality requirement is not enough to guarantee that an equilibrium will be attained. In particular, I analyze the case of multiple equilibria, since in this case there exists a whole set of rational beliefs, so that no player can ever be certain that the others believe he has certain beliefs. In this case it becomes necessary to explicitly model the process of belief formation. This model attributes to the players a theory of counterfactuals which they use in restricting the set of possible equilibria. If it were possible to attribute to the players the same theory of counterfactuals, then the players' beliefs would eventually converge.I wish to thank Michael Bacharach, In-Koo Cho, William Harper, Aanund Hylland, Isaac Levi, Wolfgang Spohn, Tommy Tan and two anonymous referees for many useful comments and suggestions. Financial support from National Science Foundation grant SES 87-10209 is gratefully acknowledged.     

Causal conditionals and counterfactuals

Causal counterfactuals e.g., 'if the ignition key had been turned then the car would have started' and causal conditionals e.g., 'if the ignition key was turned then the car started' are understood by thinking about multiple possibilities of different sorts, as shown in six experiments using converging evidence from three different types of measures. Experiments 1a and 1b showed that conditionals that comprise enabling causes, e.g., 'if the ignition key was turned then the car started' primed people to read quickly conjunctions referring to the possibility of the enabler occurring without the outcome, e.g., 'the ignition key was turned and the car did not start'. Experiments 2a and 2b showed that people paraphrased causal conditionals by using causal or temporal connectives (because, when), whereas they paraphrased causal counterfactuals by using subjunctive constructions (had…would have). Experiments 3a and 3b showed that people made different inferences from counterfactuals presented with enabling conditions compared to none. The implications of the results for alternative theories of conditionals are discussed.     

Scepticism,epistemic luck,and epistemic angst

A commonly expressed worry in the contemporary literature on the problem of epistemological scepticism is that there is something deeply intellectually unsatisfying about the dominant anti-sceptical theories. In this paper I outline the main approaches to scepticism and argue that they each fail to capture what is essential to the sceptical challenge because they fail to fully understand the role that the problem of epistemic luck plays in that challenge. I further argue that scepticism is best thought of not as a quandary directed at our possession of knowledge simpliciter, but rather as concerned with a specific kind of knowledge that is epistemically desirable. On this view, the source of scepticism lies in a peculiarly epistemic form of angst.

It is always by favour of Nature that one knows something.     

Attributionism and Counterfactual Robustness

In this journal (AJP 2016), Vishnu Sridharan presents a novel objection to attributionism, the view according to which agents are responsible for their conduct when it reflects who they are or what they value. The key to Sridharan's objection is that agents can fulfil all attributionist conditions for responsibility while being under the control of a manipulator. In this paper, we show that Sridharan's objection falls prey to a dilemma—either his manipulator is counterfactually robust, or she is not—and that neither of its horns undermines attributionism.     

The miraculous conception of counterfactuals

I wish to thank Jonathan Bennett, Wayne Davis, Paul Horwich, Donald Nute, John Pollock and anonymous referees for helpful comments and criticisms on earlier drafts of this paper.