10,987 research outputs found
New Water in Old Buckets: Hypothetical and Counterfactual Reasoning in Machâs Economy of Science
Ernst Machâs defense of relativist theories of motion in Die Mechanik involves a well-known criticism of Newtonâs theory appealing to absolute space, and of Newtonâs âbucketâ experiment. Sympathetic readers (Norton 1995) and critics (Stein 1967, 1977) agree that thereâs a tension in Machâs view: he allows for some constructed scientific concepts, but not others, and some kinds of reasoning about unobserved phenomena, but not others. Following Banks (2003), I argue that this tension can be interpreted as a constructive one, springing from Machâs approach to scientific reasoning. Machâs âeconomy of scienceâ allows for a principled distinction to be made, between natural and artificial hypothetical reasoning, and Mach defends a division of labor between the sciences in a 1903 paper for The Monist, âSpace and Geometry from the Point of View of Physical Inquiryâ. That division supports counterfactual reasoning in Machâs system, something thatâs long been denied is possible for him
Developing thoughts about what might have been
Recent research has changed how developmental psychologists understand counterfactual thinking or thoughts of what might have been. Evidence suggests that counterfactual thinking develops over an extended period into at least middle childhood, depends on domain-general processes including executive function and language, and dissociates from counterfactual emotions such as regret. In this article, we review the developmental evidence that forms a critical but often-overlooked complement to the cognitive, social, and neuroscience literatures. We also highlight topics for further research, including spontaneous counterfactual thinking and counterfactual thinking in clinical settings. © 2014 The Society for Research in Child Development
Backtracking Counterfactuals
Counterfactual reasoning -- envisioning hypothetical scenarios, or possible
worlds, where some circumstances are different from what (f)actually occurred
(counter-to-fact) -- is ubiquitous in human cognition. Conventionally,
counterfactually-altered circumstances have been treated as "small miracles"
that locally violate the laws of nature while sharing the same initial
conditions. In Pearl's structural causal model (SCM) framework this is made
mathematically rigorous via interventions that modify the causal laws while the
values of exogenous variables are shared. In recent years, however, this purely
interventionist account of counterfactuals has increasingly come under scrutiny
from both philosophers and psychologists. Instead, they suggest a backtracking
account of counterfactuals, according to which the causal laws remain unchanged
in the counterfactual world; differences to the factual world are instead
"backtracked" to altered initial conditions (exogenous variables). In the
present work, we explore and formalise this alternative mode of counterfactual
reasoning within the SCM framework. Despite ample evidence that humans
backtrack, the present work constitutes, to the best of our knowledge, the
first general account and algorithmisation of backtracking counterfactuals. We
discuss our backtracking semantics in the context of related literature and
draw connections to recent developments in explainable artificial intelligence
(XAI)
Examining the cognitive costs of counterfactual language comprehension: Evidence from ERPs
Recent empirical research suggests that understanding a counterfactual event (e.g. âIf Josie had revised, she would have passed her examsâ) activates mental representations of both the factual and counterfactual versions of events. However, it remains unclear when readers switch between these models during comprehension, and whether representing multiple âworldsâ is cognitively effortful. This paper reports two ERP studies where participants read contexts that set up a factual or counterfactual scenario, followed by a second sentence describing a consequence of this event. Critically, this sentence included a noun that was either consistent or inconsistent with the preceding context, and either included a modal verb to indicate reference to the counterfactual-world or not (thus referring to the factual-world). Experiment 2 used adapted versions of the materials used in Experiment 1 to examine the degree to which representing multiple versions of a counterfactual situation makes heavy demands on cognitive resources by measuring individualsâ working memory capacity. Results showed that when reference to the counterfactual-world was maintained by the ongoing discourse, readers correctly interpreted events according to the counterfactual-world (i.e. showed larger N400 for inconsistent than consistent words). In contrast, when cues referred back to the factual-world, readers showed no difference between consistent and inconsistent critical words, suggesting that they simultaneously compared information against both possible worlds. These results support previous dual-representation accounts for counterfactuals, and provide new evidence that linguistic cues can guide the reader in selecting which world model to evaluate incoming information against. Crucially, we reveal evidence that maintaining and updating a hypothetical model over time relies upon the availability of cognitive resources
Thought experiments in current metaphilosophical debates
Although thought experiments were first discovered as a sui generis methodological tool by philosophers of science (most prominently by Ernst Mach), the tool can also be found â even more frequently â in contemporary philosophy. Thought experiments in philosophy and science have a lot in common. However, in this chapter we will concentrate on thought experiments in philosophy only. Their use has been the centre of attention of metaphilosophical discussion in the past decade, and this chapter will provide an overview of the results this discussion has achieved and point out which issues are still open
The physical mandate for belief-goal psychology
This article describes a heuristic argument for understanding certain physical systems in terms of properties that resemble the beliefs and goals of folk psychology. The argument rests on very simple assumptions. The core of the argument is that predictions about certain events can legitimately be based on assumptions about later events, resembling Aristotelian âfinal causationâ; however, more nuanced causal entities (resembling fallible beliefs) must be introduced into these types of explanation in order for them to remain consistent with a causally local Universe
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