Can Counterfactuals Be True Or False?
Some philosophies and theologies depends on counterfactuals and the belief that these can be either true or false. However, there does seem to be problems with this line of thinking.
First, a counterfactual is a conditional whose antecedent is false and stated in the subjunctive instead of the indicative. For example: If I would have slept in this morning, I would have gotten fired. The antecedent is false, but, unlike a normal conditional, the conditional is not true simply because the antecedent is false. This is because it's a counterfactual; it's saying "I know the antecedent is false, but what if it were true?"
Second, some have relied on possible worlds to determine which counterfactuals are true. That is, when one looks at the possible world(s) that are "closest" to the actual world, the counterfactuals that obtain in this world(s) are true counterfactual conditions in the actual world. Yet, how does one determine which possible world is closest to the actual world? Are there not an infinite number of possible worlds? Presumably the response would be: The possible world that is closest to the actual world is the possible world that is exactly the same as the actual world except for the one fact that this counterfactual in the actual world is a fact in the possible world. This seems to satisfy the problem, except for this counter-example: I can imagine a second possible world that is exactly the same as the actual world (including the status of this counterfactual) except one other fact that is the same in the actual world and the first possible world (for example, my eye color). The first and second possible world are exactly the same as the actual world excepting one fact each; however, the counterfactual in question obtains in one possible world and not in the other. Which world is closest to the actual world?
Third, thoughts like these have led some to consider it impossible to test whether a counterfactual is true or not. How does one test a counterfactual? If one can actually do a test, then the counterfactual is no longer a counterfactual, but a fact. It then seems impossible to empircally test a counterfactual. Any empirical epistemology is then left in a quandry.
Fourth, this has led some to conclude that counterfactuals are neither true nor false; they are meaningless. I like this option. What do you think?
posted by Zac @ 11:49 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
"I think we'd both agree that, taking the subjunctive mood of the clauses, putting them instead into, say, the active voice, and considering them separately, we would both agree that they are meaningful. "I slept in this morning. My boss fired me." so it's not like we can't contemplate the ideas suggested by the counterfactual; I can imagine sleeping in and getting fired. "
The problem is not considering them separately, but when you put them together in the subjunctive. To what do these signs point? I would agree the best we could say is "our imagination".
This is important because some ideas of laws versus universal conditionals that seem to hold is that laws support counterfactuals, but how can anything support a counterfactual?
That last paragraph on my last comment made no sense; it should have read:
This is an important issue because there are some philosophers who think that the ability to support counterfactuals is a difference between laws and mere accidental universal conditionals. For example: all spheres of plutonium have a mass less than 100,000 kg; all spheres of gold have a mass less than 100,000 kg.
The former seems to poin to a law or a derivative of a law; the mass of plutonium would go nuclear long before you reached 100,000 kg. Whereas for the latter, it just seems an accident of nature that there is no sphere of gold in the universe greater than 100,000 kg. It could, supposedly, be otherwise.
The plutonium supposedly supports a counter factual that if there were such a sphere of plutonium, then it would blow up or something.
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