A conditional counterfactual (abbreviated CF ), is conditional containing if-clauses that conflict with facts. The term "counterfactual conditional" was coined by Nelson Goodman in 1947, extending the idea of ​​Roderick Chisholm (1946) on "conditional conditional-to-fact <". The study of counterfactual speculation increasingly involves the interest of scholars in various fields such as philosophy, human geography, psychology, cognitive psychology, history, political science, economics, social psychology, law, organizational theory, marketing, and epidemiology.
In 1748, when defining causation, David Hume referred to the counterfactual case:
"... we can define the cause for being objects , followed by others, and where all objects, similar to the first, followed by objects similar to the second Or in other words, < where, if the first object has not yet, the second is never there... ... "- David Hume, Research on Human Understanding .
Video Counterfactual conditional
Example
The difference between indicative and counterfactual conditionals, in the context of past references, is one of emphasis. This can be illustrated by a pair of examples in which the clause if is present in the last indicative in the first example but in the subjunctive pluperfect in the second:
- If Oswald does not shoot Kennedy, then someone else does .
- If Oswald does not shoot Kennedy, then someone else will .
The protocol (the if clause) of the first sentence may or may not be correct according to the speaker, so apodosis (the then clause) may also be or may be incorrect; apodosis is affirmed by the speaker to be true if the protosis is right. In this sentence, the clauses if and then are both in the past tense of the indicative mood.
In the second sentence, the speaker spoke with the certainty that Oswald did shoot Kennedy. According to the speaker, clause if is wrong, so clause then is related to counterfactual result, that is, what will happen. In this sentence, the if clause exists in the subjunctive pluperec form of the subjunctive mood, and the clause then is in conditional conditional form from the conditional state.
A pair of examples that correspond to current time references use this indicative in the clause if first sentence but subjunctive in the past in the second sentence if clause:
- If rain , then he is there inside.
- If rain , then he/she will be inside.
Here once again, in the first sentence, if the clause may or may not be true; clause then may or may not be true but of course (according to the speaker) is true depending on the clause if is true. Here clause if and clause then are in this indicative. In the second sentence, the if clause is incorrect, whereas the then clause may or may not be true but will be true in the contextual situation of if . In this sentence, the if clause is in the past subjunctive form of the subjunct mood, and the then clause is in a conditional mood.
Maps Counterfactual conditional
Inverse clause
The use of the terms "antecedent" and "next" is ambiguous. In logic, while "antecedents" usually mean if-clauses, it may refer to whichever comes first, so in statements like, "I'll do it, if I know how", it's better to avoid using words altogether. Protasis and apodosis avoid the problem completely.
Psychology
People are often involved in counterfactual thinking. Experimental evidence suggests that people's thoughts about counterfactual conditionality differ in important matters from their thinking about conditional indicative.
Understanding
Participants in the experiment are asked to read the sentence, including the counterfactual requirements, for example, 'if Mark has left the house early, he will catch the train'. After that, they are asked to identify which sentences they have shown. They often mistakenly believe that they have shown a sentence that matches the presupposed facts, for example, 'Mark did not leave home early' and 'Mark did not catch the train' (Fillenbaum, 1974). In another experiment, the participants were asked to read a conditional-counterfactual short story, for example, 'if there is a rose in the flower shop there will be a lily'. Then in the story they read sentences that correspond to the presupposed facts, for example, 'no roses and no lilies'. The counterfactual conditional 'prime' them to read sentences that match the facts presumed very quickly; no such priming effect occurs for conditional indications (Santamaria, Espino, and Byrne, 2005). They spend different amounts of time to 'update' stories containing contractual contextual rather than containing factual information (De Vega, Urrutia, and Riffo, 2007) and they focus on different parts of counterfactual conditions (Ferguson and Sanford, 2008).
Reasoning
Experiments have compared the conclusions that people draw from contrafactual conditionals and indicative conditionals. In the presence of counterfactuals, for example, 'If there is a circle on the board there will be a triangle', and further information 'in fact there is no triangle', the participants make the inference mode tollens 'no circle' more often than they do from an indication of a conditional (Byrne and Tasso, 1999). With the contractual contextual and subsequent information 'in fact there are circles', participants make the ponens mode inference as often as they do from a conditional indication. See counterfactual thinking.
Psychological accounts
Ruth MJ Byrne proposes in The Rational Imagination that people build mental representations that include two possibilities when they understand, and the reason for, a counterfactual counterfactual, for example, 'if Oswald do not shoot Kennedy, then others will have '. They imagined allegations 'Oswald did not shoot Kennedy and others do' and they also thought about the presumed facts 'Oswald did not shoot Kennedy and others did not' (Byrne, 2005). According to the theory of mental model reasoning, they construct a mental model of alternative possibilities, as described in Reduction (Johnson-Laird and Byrne, 1991).
Philosophical care
Connective
To distinguish the counterfactual conditional from the material conditional, a new logical bond '& gt;' defined, where A & gt; B can be interpreted as "If it is a case that A , then that would be the case that B ."
The truth value of the conditional material, A -> B , is determined by the truth values ​​ A and B . This is not the case for kontractualual contractual A & gt; B , because there are different situations that approve the truth values ​​A and B but that result in different evaluations of A & gt; B . For example, if Keith is in Germany, the following two conditionalities have false antecedents and wrong consequences:
- if Keith is in Mexico he will be in Africa.
- if Keith is in Mexico he will be in North America.
Indeed, if Keith is in Germany, then the three terms "Keith is in Mexico", "Keith is in Africa", and "Keith is in North America" ​​wrong. However, (1) is clearly wrong, while (2) true because Mexico is part of North America.
The possibility of world semantics
Philosophers like David Lewis and Robert Stalnaker model counterfactuals using the semantics of the world of capital logic. Semantics of condition A & gt; B is given by some function on the relative proximity of the world where A is true and B is true, on the one hand, and the world where A is true but B is not, on the other.
In Lewis account, A & gt; C is (a) void true if and only if there is no world where A is true (ie, if A is logically or metaphysically impossible); (b) it is not true if and only if, between the worlds where A is true, some worlds where C is actually closer to the real world than any world where C is incorrect; or (c) false otherwise. Although in Counterfactuals Lewis it is not clear what he meant by 'proximity', in later writings, Lewis explains that he does not intend the metric of 'proximity' to be just an idea we are common about the overall similarity.
Consider an example:
- If I eat more at breakfast, I will not be hungry at 11am.
In Lewis's account, the truth of this statement consists of the fact that, among the possible worlds where I eat more for breakfast, there is at least one world where I am not hungry at 11 am and which is closer to our world than the world in where I eat more for breakfast but am still hungry at 11 am.
Stalnaker accounts differ from Lewis especially in his acceptance of the Limitations and Uniqueness of Assumptions. The Unique Assumption is a thesis that, for every antecedent A, there is the possibility of a unique world in which A is true, whereas the Boundary Assumption is the thesis that, for the given A antecedent, there is a set of unique worlds where A is right closest. (Note that Unique Assumptions include Boundary Assumptions, but Limit Assumptions do not require Unique Assumptions.) In the Stalnaker account, A & gt; C is not really true if and only if, in the nearest world where A is true, C is true. So, the above example is right to keep watch in the closest world, where I eat more, I do not feel hungry at 11 am. Though controversial, Lewis rejects the Limit Assumption (and therefore the Unique Assumption) for ruling out the possibility that there may be a world that is closer and closer to the real world indefinitely. For example, there may be an infinite series of worlds, each with my coffee mug section smaller than an inch to the left of the real position, but nothing unique is closest. (See Lewis 1973: 20.)
One consequence of Stalnaker's acceptance of the Unique Assumption is that, if the excluded law in the center is true, then all examples of formulas (A & gt; C)? (A & gt; ¬ C) is true. The rule of thumb is the thesis that for all propositions p, p? Ã,¬p right. If the Assumption of Uniqueness is true, then for every antecedent A, there is the most unique world in which A is true. If the excluded law in the center is true, any consequence C is true or false in that world where A is true. So for every counterfactual A & gt; C, A & gt; C or A & gt; ¬ C right. This is called conditional excluded middle (CEM). Consider the following example:
- (1) If the fair coin is reversed, it will land the head.
- (2) If a fair coin is reversed, it will have a landing tail (ie not a head).
In the Stalnaker analysis, there is a world nearest where the fair coins mentioned in (1) and (2) are reversed and in that world either landed heads or tail of the ground. So whether (1) is true and (2) false or (1) false and (2) true. However, in Lewis's analysis both (1) and (2) are wrong, for a world where the head of fair coin is no more or less than the world in which they land the tail. For Lewis, 'If the coin has been reversed, it will land the head or tail' is true, but this does not mean that 'If the coin has been reversed, it will have a landing head, or: If the coin has been reversed. it will land the tail. '
Other accounts
Ramsey
The counterfactual conditionals can also be evaluated using the so-called Ramsey test: A & gt; B applies if and only if the addition of A to the body of knowledge currently has B as a consequence. This condition is related to the conditional counterfactual with a revision of belief, as an evaluation of A & gt; B can be done by first revising the current knowledge with A and then checking whether B is correct in what results. Revising is easy when A is consistent with current beliefs, but it can be difficult otherwise. Any semantics for revision of beliefs can be used to evaluate conditional statements. In contrast, any method to evaluate conditionals can be seen as a way to revise.
Ginsberg
Ginsberg (1986) has proposed a conditional semantic that assumes that current beliefs constitute a set of propositional formulas, consider the maximum set of this formula consistent with A , and add A for each -something. The rationale is that each of these maximal sets represents a possible state of trust where exactly A is possible with the original. Conditional statements A & gt; B therefore holds if and only if B is true in all such sets. Ginsberg's semantic technical criticism can be found here.
In empirical testing
The conditional counterfactual is the basis of experimental methods to establish causality in the natural and social sciences, for example, whether taking antibiotics helps cure bacterial infections. For each individual, u , there is a function that determines the state of infection u ' under two hypothetical conditions: have u take antibiotics and have u is not taken by antibiotics. Only one of these countries can be observed under any circumstances, because they are mutually exclusive. The overall effect of antibiotics on infection is defined as the difference between these two conditions, which is averaged over the entire population. If the treatment and control group were randomly selected, the antibiotic effect could be estimated by comparing recovery rates in the two groups.
Pearl
The close relationship between causal and counterfactual relations has prompted Judea Pearl (2000) to reject the possible semantics and semantics of Ramsey and Ginsberg. The latter is rejected because the causal information can not be encoded as a set of beliefs, and the first because it is difficult to perfect the size of Lewis's similarity to match the causal intuition. Pearl defines counterfactuals directly in terms of "structural equation model" - a set of equations, in which each variable is assigned a value that is an explicit function of another variable in the system. With such a model, the phrase " Y will y have X has x " (formally, X = x Y = y ) is defined as a statement: If we replace the current equation specifying X with the constant X = x , and completing the equation set for the Y variable, the solution obtained is Y = y . This definition has proven to be compatible with the possible semantic axioms of the world and forms the basis for causal conclusions in natural and social sciences, since each structural equation in the domain corresponds to a known causal mechanism that can reason with investigators by researchers.. [..]
See also
- English conditional sentence
- Irrealis mood
- Logical Consequences
- Optional mood
- Principle of explosion
- The thought experiment
Footnote
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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