Huber, Franz (2014) New Foundations for Counterfactuals. Synthese, 191 (10). pp. 2167-2193.
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Abstract
Philosophers typically rely on intuitions when providing a semantics for counterfactual conditionals. However, intuitions regarding counterfactual conditionals are notoriously shaky. The aim of this paper is to provide a principled account of the semantics of counterfactual conditionals. This principled account is provided by what I dub the Royal Rule, a deterministic analogue of the Principal Principle relating chance and credence.
The Royal Rule says that an ideal doxastic agent's initial grade of disbelief in a proposition A, given that the counterfactual distance in a given context to the closest A-worlds equals n, and no further information that is not admissible in this context, should equal n. Under the two assumptions that the presuppositions of a given context are admissible in this context, and that the theory of deterministic alethic or metaphysical modality is admissible in any context, it follows that the counterfactual distance distribution in a given context has the structure of a ranking function. The basic conditional logic V is shown to be sound and complete with respect to the resulting rank-theoretic semantics of counterfactuals.
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| Item Type: | Published Article or Volume | ||||||
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| Subjects: | General Issues > Causation General Issues > Confirmation/Induction General Issues > Decision Theory Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics General Issues > Theory Change |
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| Depositing User: | Unnamed user with email franz.huber@utoronto.ca | ||||||
| Date Deposited: | 09 Jul 2014 14:11 | ||||||
| Last Modified: | 09 Jul 2014 14:11 | ||||||
| Item ID: | 10832 | ||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Synthese | ||||||
| Publisher: | Springer | ||||||
| Official URL: | http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-01... | ||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Causation General Issues > Confirmation/Induction General Issues > Decision Theory Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics General Issues > Theory Change |
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| Date: | 2014 | ||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 2167-2193 | ||||||
| Volume: | 191 | ||||||
| Number: | 10 | ||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/10832 |
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