Abstract:Recent advances in causal reasoning have given rise to a computational model that emulates the process by which humans generate, evaluate and distinguish counterfactual sentences. Contrasted with the "possible worlds" account of counterfactuals, this "structural" model enjoys the advantages of representational economy, algorithmic simplicity and conceptual clarity. This introduction traces the emergence of the structural model and gives a panoramic view of several applications where counterfactual reasoning ha… Show more
“…Bayes nets rest on Adams's () argument that factual and counterfactual conditionals differ in their underlying semantics (see, e.g., Pearl, ). But we showed earlier that Adams's argument is flawed, and that factual and counterfactual conditionals have a parallel semantics.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The line of research based on interventions on Bayes nets continues, but it remains based on Adams's () argument, and so it treats the two sorts of conditional as dependent on different processes: Factual conditionals call for deductions, whereas counterfactual conditionals call for the do ‐operator (see, e.g., Pearl, ). The elegance of the model, however, does not imply that it yields a plausible cognitive account and, as Pearl himself acknowledges, the evidence for it is mixed.…”
Section: Alternative Theories Of Conditionalsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Theorists often claim that factual conditionals have a semantics that is quite different from that of counterfactuals (e.g., Evans & Over, , p. 131; Pearl, ; Sloman & Lagnado, ). The main argument that supports the claim is due to Adams ().…”
What is the relation between factual conditionals: If A happened then B happened, and counterfactual conditionals: If A had happened then B would have happened? Some theorists propose quite different semantics for the two. In contrast, the theory of mental models and its computer implementation interrelates them. It postulates that both can have a priori truth values, and that the semantic bases of both are possibilities: states that are possible for factual conditionals, and that were once possible but that did not happen for counterfactual conditionals. Two experiments supported these relations. Experiment 1 showed that, like factual conditionals, certain counterfactuals are true a priori, and others are false a priori. Experiment 2 replicated this result and showed that participants selected appropriate paraphrases, referring, respectively, to real and to counterfactual possibilities, for the two sorts of conditional. These results are contrary to alternative accounts of conditionals.
“…Bayes nets rest on Adams's () argument that factual and counterfactual conditionals differ in their underlying semantics (see, e.g., Pearl, ). But we showed earlier that Adams's argument is flawed, and that factual and counterfactual conditionals have a parallel semantics.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The line of research based on interventions on Bayes nets continues, but it remains based on Adams's () argument, and so it treats the two sorts of conditional as dependent on different processes: Factual conditionals call for deductions, whereas counterfactual conditionals call for the do ‐operator (see, e.g., Pearl, ). The elegance of the model, however, does not imply that it yields a plausible cognitive account and, as Pearl himself acknowledges, the evidence for it is mixed.…”
Section: Alternative Theories Of Conditionalsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Theorists often claim that factual conditionals have a semantics that is quite different from that of counterfactuals (e.g., Evans & Over, , p. 131; Pearl, ; Sloman & Lagnado, ). The main argument that supports the claim is due to Adams ().…”
What is the relation between factual conditionals: If A happened then B happened, and counterfactual conditionals: If A had happened then B would have happened? Some theorists propose quite different semantics for the two. In contrast, the theory of mental models and its computer implementation interrelates them. It postulates that both can have a priori truth values, and that the semantic bases of both are possibilities: states that are possible for factual conditionals, and that were once possible but that did not happen for counterfactual conditionals. Two experiments supported these relations. Experiment 1 showed that, like factual conditionals, certain counterfactuals are true a priori, and others are false a priori. Experiment 2 replicated this result and showed that participants selected appropriate paraphrases, referring, respectively, to real and to counterfactual possibilities, for the two sorts of conditional. These results are contrary to alternative accounts of conditionals.
“…Our aim is to examine how people mentally represent the presupposed facts of a counterfactual conditional. The relevance of a psychological account of the mental representations and cognitive processes that underpin counterfactuals has been highlighted in contemporary philosophical, logical, and linguistic treatments of counterfactuals (e.g., Kratzer, ; Nickerson, ; Williamson, ) as well as in artificial intelligence programs for inference and other computational simulations (e.g., Ginsberg, ; Pearl, ). First we briefly summarize the extensive experimental evidence that people think about two possibilities when they understand a counterfactual.…”
When people understand a counterfactual such as “if the flowers had been roses, the trees would have been orange trees,” they think about the conjecture, “there were roses and orange trees,” and they also think about its opposite, the presupposed facts. We test whether people think about the opposite by representing alternates, for example, “poppies and apple trees,” or whether models can contain symbols, for example, “no roses and no orange trees.” We report the discovery of an inference‐to‐alternates effect—a tendency to make an affirmative inference that refers to an alternate even from a negative minor premise, for example, “there were no orange trees, therefore there were poppies.” Nine experiments show the inference‐to‐alternates effect occurs in a binary context, but not a multiple context, and for direct and indirect reference; it can be induced and reduced by prior experience with similar inferences, and it also occurs for indicative conditionals. The results have implications for theories of counterfactual conditionals, and of negation.
“…A different probabilist theory is based on a structural theory of causation, causal Bayes nets (Pearl, 2011, 2013). The theory proposes that people construct causal models, for example, in which nodes represent causes and effects, arrows represent causal direction from cause to effect, and a conditional probability table at each node gives the probability that a node is present or absent conditional on its causes (e.g., Lucas & Kemp, 2015; Sloman & Lagnado, 2005).…”
We examine two competing effects of beliefs on conditional inferences. The suppression effect occurs for conditionals, for example, "if she watered the plants they bloomed," when beliefs about additional background conditions, for example, "if the sun shone they bloomed" decrease the frequency of inferences such as modus tollens (from "the plants did not bloom" to "therefore she did not water them"). In contrast, the counterfactual elevation effect occurs for counterfactual conditionals, for example, "if she had watered the plants they would have bloomed," when beliefs about the known or presupposed facts, "she did not water the plants and they did not bloom" increase the frequency of inferences such as modus tollens. We report six experiments that show that beliefs about additional conditions take precedence over beliefs about presupposed facts for counterfactuals. The modus tollens inference is suppressed for counterfactuals that contain additional conditions (Experiments 1a and 1b). The denial of the antecedent inference (from "she did not water the plants" to "therefore they did not bloom") is suppressed for counterfactuals that contain alternatives (Experiments 2a and 2b). We report a new "switched-suppression" effect for conditionals with negated components, for example, "if she had not watered the plants they would not have bloomed": modus tollens is suppressed by alternatives and denial of the antecedent by additional conditions, rather than vice versa (Experiments 3a and 3b). We discuss the implications of the results for alternative theories of conditional reasoning.
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