Premium
Possible World Semantics and True‐True Counterfactuals
Author(s) -
Walters Lee
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
pacific philosophical quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.914
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1468-0114
pISSN - 0279-0750
DOI - 10.1111/papq.12067
Subject(s) - counterfactual conditional , counterfactual thinking , semantics (computer science) , antecedent (behavioral psychology) , epistemology , counterexample , truth condition , philosophy , computer science , mathematical economics , mathematics , psychology , programming language , discrete mathematics , social psychology
Abstract 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.