Workshop with Alan Hájek

Dates: June 1-2 2015

Professor Alan Hájek from Australian National University will give a series of talks on conditionals:

• Most Counterfactuals Are False (spread out over three talks)
  Abstract

      My title gives away my punch line: I argue that most counterfactuals are false.
      I focus on two strategies for showing a counterfactual of the form ‘if X were the case, then Y would be the case’ to be false: appealing to
          indeterminism — in particular, chanciness; and to
          indeterminacy — in particular, imprecision.
  Both are strategies for securing the truth of ‘counterfactuals’ of the form ‘if X were the case, then Y might not be the case.’ These ‘might not’ counterfactuals, I argue, are incompatible with the corresponding ‘would’ counterfactuals. But the strategies can also be used directly to show the falsehood of the ‘would’ counterfactuals, without any detour through the ‘might not’ counterfactuals.
       I consider, and reject, a number of rival positions:
           - most counterfactuals are indeterminate;
           - they have context-dependent truth values;
           - the ‘might not’/’would’ clash is merely pragmatic; and
           - there is no such clash at all.
      I concede that some counterfactuals are true in virtue of necessary connections between antecedents and consequents. But such counterfactuals are rare, and do little to offset the preponderance of false counterfactuals.
      How, then, does our practice of uttering counterfactuals survive? Close to the ordinary but false counterfactuals that we utter are counterfactuals that are true but not ordinary — e.g., ones with probabilistic consequents. They support our practice when the standards for asserting counterfactuals are forgiving, as they typically are on the street. However, the street is not always forgiving; even when it is, falsehood is merely tolerated rather than eradicated; and we philosophers are not always on the street.



• Begging to Differ With Similarity Accounts of Counterfactuals
  Abstract

  Widespread agreement among philosophers on a given topic is rare. However, it is enjoyed by similarity accounts of counterfactuals. Roughly, they say that the counterfactual
           if p were the case, q would be the case
  is true if and only if
           at the nearest p-worlds, q is true.
  I disagree with such accounts, for many reasons.



• A Poisoned Dart for Conditionals
  Abstract

       Suppose I throw at random an infinitely thin dart at a representation of the [0, 1] interval of the real line. Here are two propositions concerning the landing point:
           L (for “left” ): [0, ½]
  (In words: the dart lands on a point in the left half of the interval, endpoints included.)
          C (for “conditional”): [½, 1] → ½
  (In words: if the dart lands on a point in the right half of the interval, endpoints included, then it lands exactly on ½.)
       I will present two paradoxes concerning how L, C, and their probabilities relate to each other. They will add different claims about how L and C are inferentially related. I hope that my discussion of various ways of solving my paradoxes will shed some light on the semantics of the indicative conditional. I will target the material conditional analysis, the ‘Or-to-If’ inference, two ‘Export’ principles for iterated conditionals, and McGee’s ‘counterexample to modus ponens’. I will trace their downfall to a common source. So one of my goals is to unify a number of seemingly disparate phenomena.



Cory Nichols (Princeton) will comment on "Begging to Differ..."

H. Orri Stefánsson (Institute for Futures Studies) will comment on "Most Counterfactuals..." with a talk titled "A multidimensional response to counterfactual skepticism"
Abstract

Alan Hájek has been arguing that the counterfactuals we take for granted in practical deliberation, ordinary discourse and philosophical analysis are actually false. The aim of this talk is to respond to this skeptical challenge by suggesting a strong reading of a recent multidimensional possible world semantics for conditionals. This semantics has it that in additional to ordinary facts, there are counter-facts, that are truth-makers for counterfactual claims. I will suggest that these counterfacts are part of the fundamental structure of reality but are not in all cases entailed by the ordinary facts. The upshot is a theory of counterfactuals according to which most counterfactuals that we ordinarily accept do indeed come out true. But the cost is that we have to abandon the popular thesis of Humean supervenience.