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26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 9. Counterfactual Claims

[laws as involving claims about other possible worlds]

10 ideas
In counterfactuals we keep substances constant, and imagine new situations for them [Harré]
     Full Idea: In drawing 'countefactual' conclusions we can be thought imaginatively to vary the conditions under which the substance, set-up etc. is manipulated or stimulated, while maintaining constant our conception of the nature of the being in question.
     From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 2)
     A reaction: Presumably you could vary the substance and keep the situation fixed, but then the counterfactual seems to be 'about' something different. Either that or the 'situation' is a actually a set of substances to be tested.
Many counterfactual truths do not imply causation ('if yesterday wasn't Monday, it isn't Tuesday') [Kim, by Psillos]
     Full Idea: Kim gives a range of examples of counterfactual dependence without causation, as: 'if yesterday wasn't Monday, today wouldn't be Tuesday', and 'if my sister had not given birth, I would not be an uncle'.
     From: report of Jaegwon Kim (Causes and Counterfactuals [1973]) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §3.3
     A reaction: This is aimed at David Lewis. The objection seems like commonsense. "If you blink, the cat gets it". Causal claims involve counterfactuals, but they are not definitive of what causation is.
Lewis's account of counterfactuals is fine if we know what a law of nature is, but it won't explain the latter [Cohen,LJ on Lewis]
     Full Idea: Lewis can elucidate the logic of counterfactuals on the assumption that you are not at all puzzled about what a law of nature is. But if you are puzzled about this, it cannot contribute anything towards resolving your puzzlement.
     From: comment on David Lewis (Causation [1973]) by L. Jonathan Cohen - The Problem of Natural Laws p.219
     A reaction: This seems like a penetrating remark. The counterfactual theory is wrong, partly because it is epistemological instead of ontological, and partly because it refuses to face the really difficult problem, of what is going on out there.
An event causes another just if the second event would not have happened without the first [Lewis, by Psillos]
     Full Idea: Lewis gives an account of causation in terms of counterfactual conditionals (roughly, an event c causes an event e iff if c had not happened then e would not have happened either).
     From: report of David Lewis (works [1973]) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation Intro
     A reaction: This feels wrong to me. It is a version of Humean constant conjunction, but counterfactuals are too much a feature of our minds, and not sufficiently a feature of the world, to do this job. Tricky.
Laws are true generalisations which support counterfactuals and are confirmed by instances [Fodor]
     Full Idea: Laws are true generalisations that support counterfactuals and are confirmed by their instances.
     From: Jerry A. Fodor (Jerry A. Fodor on himself [1994], p.293)
     A reaction: This seems correct, but it doesn't disentangle laws as mental states from laws as features of nature
'If he wasn't born he wouldn't have died' doesn't mean birth causes death, so causation isn't counterfactual [Lowe]
     Full Idea: Counterfactual analyses of event causation don't seem to work, because 'if Napoleon hadn't been born he wouldn't have died' is true, but doesn't mean his birth caused his death.
     From: E.J. Lowe (A Survey of Metaphysics [2002], p.161)
     A reaction: Nice counterexample, which looks pretty conclusive. Birth makes death possible; it creates the necessary conditions within which it can be caused.
Dowe commends the Conserved Quantity theory as it avoids mention of counterfactuals [Dowe, by Psillos]
     Full Idea: Dowe commends the Conserved Quantity theory because it avoids any mention of counterfactuals.
     From: report of Phil Dowe (Physical Causation [2000]) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §4.4
     A reaction: Clearly the truth of a counterfactual is quite a problem for an empiricist/scientist, but one needs to distinguish between reality and our grasp of it. We commit ourselves to counterfactuals, even if causation is transfer of conserved quantities.
In some counterfactuals, the counterfactual event happens later than its consequent [Psillos]
     Full Idea: In "had the acrobat jumped, there would have been a safety net" the antecedent of the counterfactual (the jumping) is temporally later than the consequent (the installation of the net).
     From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §3.3)
     A reaction: This blocks anyone (e.g. David Lewis) who tries to define counterfactual claims entirely in terms of a condition followed by a consequence. Nice example.
Counterfactual theories say causes make a difference - if c hadn't occurred, then e wouldn't occur [Psillos]
     Full Idea: The counterfactual theory is a non-Humean relation between singular events; the thought is that causation makes a difference - to say that c causes e is to say that if c hadn't occurred, e wouldn't have occurred either.
     From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §4.5.4)
     A reaction: Helpful. I'm beginning to think that this theory is wrong. It gives an account of how we see causation, and a test for it, but it says nothing about what causation actually is.
Essentialism can't use conditionals to explain regularities, because of possible interventions [Bird]
     Full Idea: The straightforward dispositional essentialist account of laws by subjunctive conditionals is false because dispositions typically suffer from finks and antidotes.
     From: Alexander Bird (Nature's Metaphysics [2007], 3.4)
     A reaction: [Finks and antidotes intervene before a disposition can take effect] This seems very persuasive to me, and shows why you can't just explain laws as counterfactual or conditional claims. Explanation demands what underlies them.