Counterfactuals with disjunctive antecedents

McKay, Thomas J.; Inwagen, Peter van

doi:10.1007/bf01873862

Cited by 64 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 1 publication

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Second, there are good counterexamples to SDA. To take McKay and van Inwagen's (, p. 355) example; from, If Spain had fought on either the Allied side or the Axis side, she would have fought on the Axis side it does not follow that If Spain had fought on the Allied side, she would have fought on the Axis side. But note that this case against SDA does not extend to SDA*. So even if we do think that we are mislead by disjunctive antecedents in the case of SDA, this consideration does not tell against SDA*.…”

Section: The Logic Of Counterfactualsmentioning

confidence: 95%

Possible World Semantics and True‐True Counterfactuals

Walters

2015

Pacific Philosophical Qtr

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The standard semantics for counterfactuals ensures that any counterfactual with a true antecedent and true consequent is itself true. There have been many recent attempts to amend the standard semantics to avoid this result. I show that these proposals invalidate a number of further principles of the standard logic of counterfactuals. The case against the automatic truth of counterfactuals with true components does not extend to these further principles, however, so it is not clear that rejecting the latter should be a consequence of rejecting the former. Instead I consider how one might defuse putative counterexamples to the truth of true-true counterfactuals.One allegedly undesirable feature of the standard Stalnaker-Lewis possible world semantics for counterfactuals is that conditionals with true components are themselves trivially true ( §1). Lewis proposes a semantics which lacks this feature, but this too has been deemed unsatisfactory ( §2). As a result, several authors have tried to revise the standard semantics so as to avoid the automatic truth of counterfactuals with true components ( §4- §7). I note, however, ( §3) that as well as making counterfactuals with true components automatically true, the standard semantics validates a range of plausible and popular principles. Then ( §4- §7) I show how each modification of the standard account considered here requires a number of these further principles to be rejected. Such accounts then are logically revisionary in ways that many opponents of the automatic truth of true-true counterfactuals find objectionable. I close by highlighting the lessons to be learnt from the discussion of these semantic proposals ( §8), and by suggesting what the defender of the trivial truth of true-true counterfactuals can say in response to putative counterexamples ( §9).

show abstract

Section: The Logic Of Counterfactualsmentioning

confidence: 95%

Possible World Semantics and True‐True Counterfactuals

Walters

2015

Pacific Philosophical Qtr

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For certain 'excluder' counterfactuals appear to be straightforward counterexamples to the rule. A case of McKay and Van Inwagen (1977) is 'If Spain had fought with the Axis or the Allies, she would have fought with the Axis'. According to Simplification, this should imply 'If Spain had fought with the Allies she would have fought with the Axis'.…”

Section: A ∨ B > C A(b) > Cmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since we can go from A > C to (A ∨ (A ∧ B)) > C by Substitution and then to (A ∧ B) > C by Simplification.16 As suggested inLewis (1977), for example, or McKay andVan Inwagen (1977).…”

mentioning

confidence: 97%

A difficulty for the possible worlds analysis of counterfactuals

Fine

2012

Synthese

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…However, these examples all have a special form, with the consequent coinciding with one of the disjuncts in the antecedent. The most famous example is from McKay & Van Inwagen (1977): If Spain had fought with the Axis or the Allies in WWII, she would have fought with the Axis. On the standard theory of counterfactuals (Lewis 1973), the apparent truth of this sentence would be explained by saying that worlds where Spain fought with the Axis are more similar to the actual world than worlds where Spain fought with the Allies.…”

Section: Disjunctive Antecedentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lifting conditionals to inquisitive semantics

Ciardelli

2016

SALT

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper describes how any theory which assigns propositions to conditional sentences can be lifted to the setting of inquisitive semantics, where antecedents and consequents may be associated with multiple propositions. We show that the lifted account improves on the original account in two ways: first, it leads to a better analysis of disjunctive antecedents, which are treated as introducing multiple assumptions; second, it extends the original account to cover two further classes of conditional constructions, namely, unconditionals and conditional questions.

show abstract

Counterfactuals with disjunctive antecedents

Cited by 64 publications

References 1 publication

Possible World Semantics and True‐True Counterfactuals

Possible World Semantics and True‐True Counterfactuals

A difficulty for the possible worlds analysis of counterfactuals

Lifting conditionals to inquisitive semantics

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About