Questions tagged [counterfactuals]
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32 questions
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Is this a valid argument against Nozick's Adherence condition?
In Philosophical Explanations (1981), Robert Nozick proposes a tracking theory of knowledge that replaces the traditional “justified true belief” model with modal conditions meant to explain how ...
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Arguments that are against Nozick's Adherence condition?
I’ve been readying Robert Nozick’s tracking theory of knowledge from Philosophical Explanations (1981), and I’m trying to understand whether his fourth condition — often called the adherence condition ...
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If guns weren't invented, would Abraham Lincoln still be alive? [closed]
A few years ago, the satire website Babylon Bee ("Fake News You Can Trust") posted a video about "Frightening but 100% True Facts About Guns." In this video, they say that since ...
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Does asking counterfactual questions about the context/conditions of one's birth presuppose the existence of souls? [closed]
If I ask the question "Why was I born in this body and not in another body?" or similar variations such as "Why didn’t I have different parents?" or "Why was I born on this ...
user80226
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Can there be a fundamental contrastive explanation to reality? [closed]
By contrastive, I mean, why is reality this way rather than another way?
No matter what sort of “fundamental” explanation grounds all of reality, or is the ultimate cause of all reality, can one not ...
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Do "ought" and "must" split like "should"/"shall"?
Pursuant to my earlier question regarding "ought" and "must": we also have these words "should" and "shall." Nowadays, "should" is used in a kindred ...
user40843
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Is it possible to have a counterfactual divine-command ethics? [closed]
What I mean is a theory that starts off with two conflicting premises: (A) that the concept of the divine will is relevant to the proper solution to at least one, and if only one, real moral question; ...
user40843
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Does philosophy have formal theories to explain why many secular or religious stories apparently die and others persist or live as history?
Why Christianity became popular | Yuval Noah Harari and Lex Fridman:
https://youtu.be/PMeCkvtqpik
If I understand Yuval Harari he argues that humans are storytellers and our behavior seems to be ...
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The vertiginous question: Why am I me and not someone else?
From Wikipedia:
Benj Hellie's vertiginous question asks why, of all the subjects of experience out there, this one—the one corresponding to the human being referred to as Benj Hellie—is the one whose ...
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Is my understanding of Quine's Bizet-Verdi counterfactuals correct?
I'm currently reading Methods of Logic (Fourth Edition) by W. V. Quine. On p. 23 of Chapter 3 on The Conditional, he says
Whatever the proper analysis of the contrafactual conditional may be, we may ...
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what is difference between "trumping preemption," "preemption," and "not trumping"?
I'm reading Lewis's paper "Causation as Influence," and I understand the example of the Major-Sergeant command as a case of trumping preemption, while the example of Suzy and Billy throwing ...
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Existence of counterfactuals (looking for libertarian free will perspective)
Counterfactuals are events that may occur, but often don't. Such a concept tends to accompany the libertarian free will position, since if there is a free choice among alternatives, then this ...
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Quid Accidit? Quid Non Accidit?
We seem to be obsessed by what happened. Trump as president, happened! Moon landing, happened! Buddha died, happened!
What about(ism) things that didn't happen? Are they - nonevents - as opposed to ...
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Is the nature of morality counterfactual?
I know that just because some action or state of affairs is morally right, that does not mean it will actually happen. So, does that mean morality is counterfactual in nature? Or am I misunderstanding ...
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Is imaginative resistance evidence against, or for, moral fictionalism?
There's an entry in the SEP called "Imaginative Resistance" which goes over an account of a problem with our ability to entertain moral counterfactuals:
The phenomenon of “imaginative ...
user40843