Chances, counterfactuals and similarity

John Hawthorne in a recent paper takes issue with Lewisian accounts of counterfactuals, when relevant laws of nature are chancy. I respond to his arguments on behalf of the Lewisian, and conclude that while some can be rebutted, the case against the original Lewisian account is strong. I develop a neo-Lewisian account of what makes for closeness of worlds. I argue that my revised version avoids Hawthorne’s challenges. I argue that this is closer to the spirit of Lewis’s first (non-chancy) proposal than is Lewis’s own suggested modification

Counterfactual Skepticism and Multidimensional Semantics

It has recently been argued that indeterminacy and indeterminism make most ordinary counterfactuals false. I argue that a plausible way to avoid such counterfactual skepticism is to postulate the existence of primitive modal facts that serve as truth-makers for counterfactual claims. Moreover, I defend a new theory of ‘might’ counterfactuals, and develop assertability and knowledge criteria to suit such unobservable ‘counterfacts’

The Coat Problem. Counterfactuals, Truth-makers, and Temporal specification

Standard semantic treatments of counterfactuals appeal to a relation of similarity between possible worlds. Similarity, however, is a vague notion. Lewis suggests reducing the vagueness of similarity by adopting a principle known as 'late departure' (LD): the more the past two worlds share, the more they are similar. LD has several virtues. However, as Bennett points out, a standard semantics based on LD suffers from the so-called coat problem. In a nutshell, we are led to assign counterintuitive truth-values to counterfactuals whose antecedent time is left underspecified. In the present paper, we argue that the coat problem may be solved by defining a time-sensitive notion of similarity. To illustrate, we assume a Priorean, tensed language, interpreted on branching-time frames in the usual, 'Ockhamist' way, and we enrich it with a counterfactual connective. Within this framework, we define a time-sensitive relation of similarity, based on Yablo's work on truth-makers and partial truth. In the resulting semantics, which has independent interest, the coat problem does not arise

Examination of Molinism

What is the driving force behind salvation? Is it God’s sovereign will, enacting His efficacious grace upon the heart of man? Or is it the free will of man himself, choosing to accept the grace that has been extended to him? This is the age-old question behind the argument of sovereignty versus free will. Luis de Molina, a sixteenth century Jesuit theologian, believed that God, through His omniscience and omnipotence, can predestine an individual for salvation while keeping the free will of that individual intact. This system, known as Molinism, stands on three main principles: a wholly libertarian account of man’s free will, the conviction that the grace the Lord extends to complete salvific acts is not in itself intrinsically efficacious, and the assumption of the truth of the concept of Scientia media, or Middle Knowledge

Two Notions Of Safety

Timothy Williamson (1992, 224–5) and Ernest Sosa (1996) have ar- gued that knowledge requires one to be safe from error. Something is said to be safe from happening iff it does not happen at “close” worlds. I expand here on a puzzle noted by John Hawthorne (2004, 56n) that suggests the need for two notions of closeness. Counterfac- tual closeness is a matter of what could in fact have happened, given the specific circumstances at hand. The notion is involved in the semantics for counterfactuals and is the one epistemologists have typically assumed. Normalized closeness is rather a matter of what could typically have happened, that is, what would go on in a class of normal alternatives to actuality, irrespectively of whether or not they could have happened in the circumstances at hand

Two Notions Of Safety

Timothy Williamson (1992, 224–5) and Ernest Sosa (1996) have ar- gued that knowledge requires one to be safe from error. Something is said to be safe from happening iff it does not happen at “close” worlds. I expand here on a puzzle noted by John Hawthorne (2004, 56n) that suggests the need for two notions of closeness. Counterfac- tual closeness is a matter of what could in fact have happened, given the specific circumstances at hand. The notion is involved in the semantics for counterfactuals and is the one epistemologists have typically assumed. Normalized closeness is rather a matter of what could typically have happened, that is, what would go on in a class of normal alternatives to actuality, irrespectively of whether or not they could have happened in the circumstances at hand

Explanation and Quasi-Miracles in Narrative Understanding: The Case of Poetic Justice

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Craig Bourne, and Emily Caddick Bourne, ‘Explanation and Quasi‐miracles in Narrative Understanding: The Case of Poetic Justice’, Dialectica, Vol. 71 (4): 563-579, January 2018, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/1746-8361.12201. Under embargo until 29 January 2020. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.David Lewis introduced the idea of a quasi-miracle to overcome a problem in his initial account of counterfactuals. Here we put the notion of a quasi-miracle to a different and new use, showing that it offers a novel account of the phenomenon of poetic justice, where characters in a narrative get their due by happy accident (for example, when the murderer of King Mitys happens to be crushed by a falling statue of Mitys). The key to understanding poetic justice is to see what makes poetically just events remarkable coincidences. We argue that remarkable coincidence is to be understood in terms of a distinctive type of experience quasi-miracles offer. Cases of poetic justice offer a dual awareness of the accidental nature of the events and of a non-accidental process, involving intention, which it appears would explain them. We also extend this account to incorporate how we might experience magic tricks. An account of poetic justice as quasi-miraculous allows us to account for the experience of encounters with poetic justice, as involving the incongruity of seeing design in accident.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio