Showing papers on "Counterfactual conditional published in 2014"

With an Eye Toward the Future: The Impact of Counterfactual Thinking on Affect, Attitudes, and Behavior

Abstract: That counterfactuals "stink of the past" is perhaps the most well docu­ mented finding of prior research on counterfactual thinking. Thoughts about what might have been persist after an event and influence indi­ viduals' affective responses and judgments (see Roese & Olson, chapter 1). Findings from other research, including our own, however, indicate that counterfactuals can also "smell of the future" in their influence on affective responses, attitudes, and behavior. In other words, individuals' concerns and thoughts about their future prospects might shape the nature and implications of their counterfactual thoughts.

Statistics, causality and Bell's theorem

Abstract: Bell�s [Physics 1 (1964) 195�200] theorem is popularly supposed to establish the nonlocality of quantum physics. Violation of Bell�s inequality in experiments such as that of Aspect, Dalibard and Roger [Phys. Rev. Lett. 49 (1982) 1804�1807] provides empirical proof of nonlocality in the real world. This paper reviews recent work on Bell�s theorem, linking it to issues in causality as understood by statisticians. The paper starts with a proof of a strong, finite sample, version of Bell�s inequality and thereby also of Bell�s theorem, which states that quantum theory is incompatible with the conjunction of three formerly uncontroversial physical principles, here referred to as locality, realism and freedom. Locality is the principle that the direction of causality matches the direction of time, and that causal influences need time to propagate spatially. Realism and freedom are directly connected to statistical thinking on causality: they relate to counterfactual reasoning, and to randomisation, respectively. Experimental loopholes in state-of-the-art Bell type experiments are related to statistical issues of post-selection in observational studies, and the missing at random assumption. They can be avoided by properly matching the statistical analysis to the actual experimental design, instead of by making untestable assumptions of independence between observed and unobserved variables. Methodological and statistical issues in the design of quantum Randi challenges (QRC) are discussed. The paper argues that Bell�s theorem (and its experimental confirmation) should lead us to relinquish not locality, but realism.

Functions of Counterfactual Thinking

Abstract: What if . . . ? With these words human beings achieve the capacity to catapult them­selves beyond the muck and malignancy of the actual into the liberating realm of the possible. What if you had invested more in mutual funds last year? What if you had learned to speak French as a child? Or, what if you had bought the winning million-dollar lottery ticket last week? Such articulations of a possible yet untrue past are called counterfactual thoughts, and an increasing number of researchers are recognizing the significance of their pervasive presence in people's mental lives. The above examples capture something of the range of counterfactual possi­ bilities, from the mundane to the fantastic, that can easily be generated on demand.

Counterfactuals and the fixity of the past

Abstract: I argue that David Lewis’s attempt, in his ‘Counterfactual Dependence and Time’s Arrow’, to explain the fixity of the past in terms of counterfactual independence is unsuccessful. I point out that there is an ambiguity in the claim that the past is counterfactually independent of the present (or, more generally, that the earlier is counterfactually independent of the later), corresponding to two distinct theses about the relation between time and counterfactuals, both officially endorsed by Lewis. I argue that Lewis’s attempt is flawed for a variety of reasons, including the fact that his own theory about the evaluation of counterfactuals requires too many exceptions to the general rule that the past is counterfactually independent of the present. At the end of the paper, I consider a variant of Lewis’s strategy that attempts to explain the fixity of the past in terms of causal, rather than counterfactual, independence. I conclude that, although this variant avoids some of the objections that afflict Lewis’s account, it nevertheless seems to be incapable of giving a satisfactory explanation of the notion of the fixity of the past.

Identification and counterfactuals in dynamic models of market entry and exit

Abstract: This paper addresses a fundamental identification problem in the structural estimation of dynamic oligopoly models of market entry and exit. Using the standard datasets in existing empirical applications, three components of a firm’s profit function are not separately identified: the fixed cost of an incumbent firm, the entry cost of a new entrant, and the scrap value of an exiting firm. We study the implications of this result on the power of this class of models to identify the effects of different comparative static exercises and counterfactual public policies. First, we derive a closed-form relationship between the three unknown structural functions and the two functions that are identified from the data. We use this relationship to provide the correct interpretation of the estimated objects that are obtained under the ‘normalization assumptions’ considered in most applications. Second, we characterize a class of counterfactual experiments that are identified using the estimated model, despite the non-separate identification of the three primitives. Third, we show that there is a general class of counterfactual experiments of economic relevance that are not identified. We present a numerical example that illustrates how ignoring the non-identification of these counterfactuals (i.e., making a ‘normalization assumption’ on some of the three primitives) generates sizable biases that can modify even the sign of the estimated effects. Finally, we discuss possible solutions to address these identification problems.

Semantic Plasticity and Speech Reports

Abstract: Most meanings we express belong to large families of variant meanings, among which it would be implausible to suppose that some are much more apt for being expressed than others. This abundance of candidate meanings creates pressure to think that the proposition attributing any particular meaning to an expression is modally plastic: its truth depends very sensitively on the exact microphysical state of the world. However, such plasticity seems to threaten ordinary counterfactuals whose consequents contain speech reports, since it is hard to see how we could reasonably be confident in a counterfactual whose consequent can be true only if a certain very finely tuned microphysical configuration obtains. This essay develops the foregoing puzzle and explores several possible solutions.

Counterfactual thinking in moral judgment: an experimental study

Abstract: Counterfactual thinking is thinking about a past that did not happen. This is often the case in 'if only...' situations, where we wish something had or had not happened. To make a choice in a moral decision-making situation is particularly hard and, therefore, may be often associated with the imagination of a different outcome. The main aim of the present study is to investigate counterfactual thinking in the context of moral reasoning. We used a modified version of Greene’s moral dilemmas test, studying both the time needed to provide a counterfactual in the first and third person and the type of given response (in context-out of context) in a sample of 90 healthy subjects.We found a longer response time for personal vs. impersonal moral dilemmas. This effect was enhanced in the first person perspective, while in the elderly there was an overall slowing of response time. Out of context/omissive responses were more frequent in the case of personal moral dilemmas presented in the first person version, with females showing a marked increase in this kind of response.These findings suggest that gender and perspective have a critical role in counterfactual thinking in the context of moral reasoning, and may have implications for the understanding of gender-related inclinations as well as differences in moral judgement.

How Far to the Road Not Taken? The Effect of Psychological Distance on Counterfactual Direction

Abstract: Upward and downward counterfactuals serve the distinct motivational functions of self-improvement and self-enhancement, respectively. Drawing on construal level theory, which contends that increasing psychological distance from an event leads people to focus on high-level, self-improvement versus low-level, self-enhancement goals, we propose that distance will alter counterfactual direction in a way that satisfies these distinct motives. We found that people generated more downward counterfactuals about recent versus distant past events, while they tended to generate more upward counterfactuals about distant versus recent past events (Experiment 1). Consistent results were obtained for social distance (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 demonstrated that distance affects the direction of open-ended counterfactual thoughts. Finally, Experiment 4 explored a potential mechanism, demonstrating that manipulating temporal distance produced changes in participants’ self-improvement versus self-enhancement motivations w...

Conditional Reasoning and Emotional Experience: A Review of the Development of Counterfactual Thinking

Abstract: What do human beings use conditional reasoning for? A psychological consequence of counterfactual conditional reasoning is emotional experience, in particular, regret and relief. Adults' thoughts about what might have been influence their evaluations of reality. We discuss recent psychological experiments that chart the relationship between children's ability to engage in conditional reasoning and their experience of counterfactual emotions. Relative to conditional reasoning, counterfactual emotions are late developing. This suggests that children need not only competence in conditional reasoning, but also to engage in this thinking spontaneously. Developments in domain general cognitive processing (the executive functions) allow children to develop from conditional reasoning to reasoning with counterfactual content and, eventually, to experiencing counterfactual emotions.

Basic Conditional Reasoning: How Children Mimic Counterfactual Reasoning

Abstract: Children approach counterfactual questions about stories with a reasoning strategy that falls short of adults' Counterfactual Reasoning (CFR). It was dubbed "Basic Conditional Reasoning" (BCR) in Rafetseder et al. (Child Dev 81(1):376---389, 2010). In this paper we provide a characterisation of the differences between BCR and CFR using a distinction between permanent and nonpermanent features of stories and Lewis/Stalnaker counterfactual logic. The critical difference pertains to how consistency between a story and a conditional antecedent incompatible with a nonpermanent feature of the story is achieved. Basic conditional reasoners simply drop all nonpermanent features of the story. Counterfactual reasoners preserve as much of the story as possible while accommodating the antecedent.

Overdetermination, Counterfactuals, and Mental Causation

Abstract: The overdetermination problem has long been raised as a challenge to nonreductive physicalism. Nonreductive physicalists have, in various ways, tried to resolve the problem through appeal to counterfactuals. This essay does two things. First, it takes up the question whether counterfactuals can yield an appropriate notion of causal redundancy and argues for a negative answer. Second, it examines how this issue bears on the mental causation debate. In particular, it considers the argument that the overdetermination problem simply does not arise on a dependency conception of causation and shows why this idea, though initially appealing, does not address the real problem. As the essay shows, the idea derives its spurious plausibility from the fact that the dependency conception cannot even make sense of our pretheoretic idea of causal redundancy. The essay concludes by briefly discussing a possible picture of mental causation that suggests itself in light of these results. The overdetermination problem has long been raised as a challenge to nonreductive physicalism. The problem is that a nonreductive physicalist view of mind seems to make every case of mental causation a case of overdetermination. Nonreductive physicalists have, in various ways, tried to resolve the problem through appeal to counterfactuals. In this essay, I take up the question whether counterfactuals can yield an appropriate notion of causal redundancy and examine how this issue bears on the mental causation debate. In particular, I'll be discussing whether, or to what extent, the overdetermination problem turns on particular conceptions of causation. The essay falls into two parts. In the first half (sections 1�2), after briefly presenting the overdetermination problem in section 1, I address the question whether counterfactuals can capture the notion of overdetermination and argue in section 2 for a negative answer. First, I consider David Lewis's (1986) and Jonathan Schaffer's (2003) definitions of overdetermination, and possible revisions to them, and show that the conditions they specify are neither necessary nor sufficient for overdetermination. I then argue that counterfactual analyses of overdetermination face the same kinds of problems as counterfactual analyses of causation and show that the source of these problems is that counterfactual analyses of overdetermination�just as those of causation�cannot accommodate the intuitive idea that causation is an intrinsic relation between events. The second half (sections 3�4) explores the implications of these observations for the mental causation problem. In section 3, I first argue that the attempt of Karen Bennett (2003, 2008) and similar attempts to resolve the overdetermination problem by invoking counterfactuals rest on a false premise, and then respond to the argument that the overdetermination problem simply does not arise on a dependency conception of causation (e.g., Burge 1993; Loewer 2002, 2007). I show why this idea, though initially appealing, does not address the real problem. As we will see, the idea derives its spurious plausibility from the fact that the dependency conception cannot make sense of our pretheoretic idea of causal redundancy. This means that the overdetermination problem cannot even be coherently stated on the dependency approach, revealing that counterfactual talk about causation is expressively impoverished. I conclude in section 4 by briefly discussing a possible picture of mental causation that suggests itself in light of these results.

Counterfactual Reasoning in Foreign Policy Analysis: The Case of German Nonparticipation in the Libya Intervention of 2011

Abstract: The abstention of the conservative-liberal government under Chancellor Angela Merkel on UN Security Council resolution 1973 marked the first occasion in which the Federal Republic of Germany stood against all three of its main Western partners, the US, France, and the UK, simultaneously, on a major foreign policy issue. Many accounts of this decision invoke the influence of electoral incentives. What is problematic, however, is that the causal weight attached to electoral politics is often left ambiguous and difficult to assess with traditional case study methods. The article, therefore, employs counterfactual reasoning to scrutinize “electoral politics” explanations of Germany's policy on Libya. Specifically, it develops counterfactuals in which decision making did not take place in the shadow of upcoming elections and investigates how other variables on different levels of analysis would have shaped decision making in the counterfactual scenarios. The findings suggest that electoral incentives did not decisively shift German foreign policy on Libya. More generally, the article speaks to the value of counterfactuals in foreign policy analysis.

Past and future implications of near-misses and their emotional consequences.

Abstract: The Reflection and Evaluation Model (REM) of comparative thinking predicts that temporal perspective could moderate people's emotional reactions to close counterfactuals following near-misses (Markman & McMullen, 2003). The experiments reported in this paper tested predictions derived from this theory by examining how people's emotional reactions to a near-miss at goal during a football match (Experiment 1) or a close score in a TV game show (Experiment 2) depended on the level of perceived future possibility. In support of the theory it was found that the presence of future possibility enhanced affective assimilation (e.g., if the near-miss occurred at the beginning of the game the players who had nearly scored were hopeful of future success) whereas the absence of future possibility enhanced affective contrast (e.g., if the near-miss occurred at the end of the game the players who had nearly scored were disappointed about missing an opportunity). Furthermore the experiments built upon our theoretical understanding by exploring the mechanisms which produce assimilation and contrast effects. In Experiment 1 we examined the incidence of present-oriented or future-oriented thinking, and in Experiment 2 we examined the mediating role of counterfactual thinking in the observed effect of proximity on emotions by testing whether stronger counterfactuals (measured using counterfactual probability estimates) produce bigger contrast and assimilation effects. While the results of these investigations generally support the REM, they also highlight the necessity to consider other psychological mechanisms (e.g., social comparison), in addition to counterfactual thinking, that might contribute to the emotional consequences of near-miss outcomes.

Causation in a timeless world

Abstract: This paper offers a new way to evaluate counterfactual conditionals on the supposition that actually, there is no time. We then parlay this method of evaluation into a way of evaluating causal claims. Our primary aim is to preserve, at a minimum, the assertibility of certain counterfactual and causal claims once time has been excised from reality. This is an important first step in a more general reconstruction project that has two important components. First, recovering our ordinary language claims involving notions such as persistence, change and agency and, second, recovering enough observational evidence so that any timeless metaphysics is not empirically self-refuting. However, the project of investigating causation in a timeless setting has a greater relevance than its application to timeless physical theory alone. For, as we show, it can be used to model the assertibility conditions of causal claims more generally.

The worldly constituents of perceptual presence

Abstract: In a thought-provoking article, Seth (2014) has elaborated a combined sensorimotor and predictive coding approach to perception. His proposal links perceptual presence with the counterfactual richness of predictive models in the brain, an appealing move, which is not without problems. Here I briefly state my main conceptual concern with the idea. I believe Seth can take this worry into account by shifting the emphasis from the brain to the worldly constituents of perceptual presence. There are two broad ways of interpreting O'Regan and Noe's (2001) claim that perception depends on the mastery of the laws of sensorimotor contingencies (SMCs). They can be broadly depicted as conceiving mastery as in-the-head or not-just-in-the-head. In-the-head notions of mastery can be sufficiently pinned down to states in an agent's functional architecture. Whether these are instantiated inside a skull or not, pace the label, doesn't matter; the resulting notion is internalist and representational. Not-just-in-the-head interpreters (e.g., Hutto and Myin, 2013) make appeals to non-representational forms of know-how to account for mastery. Seth defends a marriage of predictive perception (PP) probabilistic models (an in-the-head approach, as he acknowledges) and SMCs theory (SMCT). This union could result in a powerful new version of SMCT, but it sounds as if one condition is for it to abandon its unwed enactive folly and move permanently into the household of PP and its in-the-head folks. Is this the inevitable option? Refinements to PP allow Seth to explain both perceptual content and presence; the latter—this is the most interesting aspect—is associated with the counterfactual richness of predictive models. In a related move, Beaton (2013) has also argued that counterfactual reasoning is a natural partner for SMCT. And yet there remains something hard to pinpoint about this idea. What is the exact connection between veridicality and counterfactual richness? The matter is not so clear. Perceptual content and presence are not always so easily extricable. Witness Seth's own example comparing a free-standing ellipse with the same ellipse as part of a cylinder. A difference in counterfactual richness produces a perceptual difference in content! The ellipse now looks like a circle while presence seems unaffected; both lie equally veridical on the page. Content and presence are not independent (nor they need to be in Seth's account) and it seems that counterfactual richness can affect both. The proposal does encourage an examination of synesthesia, a problematic case for SMCT. Seth proposes that different associationist theories could all be expressed in terms of intermediate level linkages in hierarchical generative models (HGMs) in the brain incorporating both the inducer and the concurrent in synesthetic experience. This link, he suggests, might be resistant to alterations by the prediction errors that arise as the inducer is encountered without concurrent stimuli, and that such resistance could be explained by an unusually high prior precision of intermediate level models where the association occurs. Putting aside the question of whether this is not too strong an exception for the normal workings of HGMs—it may not be—why would intermediate models supersede low-level error-correcting mechanisms and so result in sustaining an impoverished repertoire of counterfactual probability distributions affecting concurrent presence (and not content) in synesthetes? It would be necessary to explain why, if both content and presence are expressed in probabilistic action-sensation mappings, and if counterfactual richness could affect both (ellipse-cylinder example), then error-correcting mechanisms at the lower level manage not to rectify for aberrant presence in synesthetes. Seth's assumption, from what I understand, seems to be that there is no interference between how probabilities are encoded for actual processed stimuli and for counterfactuals. Let us consider our first question again. What is the entailment between counterfactually-rich models and perceptual presence? Or more generally, what is the link between sensitivity, not so much to counterfactuals, but more specifically to the structure of action-dependent virtual likelihoods (in agent and world) and the veridicality of perception? To answer this we must look at where counterfactual currency is cashed out, what is the source that informs counterfactual probability densities at all levels in the hierarchy. If we follow Seth's proposal eventually this must happen at the lower levels, at the interface with the world: counterfactual sensorimotor knowledge may then cascade through the hierarchy, but it must be informed by actual sensorimotor engagements. Here is why it is risky for a PP-based theory to assume that model attunement due to lower-level prediction errors could be prevented from propagating upwards in cases of synesthesia: the whole idea depends on maintaining some degree of accuracy and precision for counterfactual inferences too, i.e., it depends on regular updating by interactions with the world. The necessary involvement of the world in determining presence shouldn't surprise us. It is here where not just actual events can get verified but the real structure of counterfactuals too. How? A lesson that can be derived from dynamical operationalizations of SMCs (Buhrmann et al., 2013), even if they have only been explored in very simple systems, is that there is a virtual (a nuanced sub-species of counterfactual) structure generated in the engagement between agent and world; more structure than just the actual sensorimotor trajectory. For instance, if I walk on a slope there is a strong downward tendency for my movement, even when I walk uphill. This is real and does not depend on my having enough sensitivity to detect it. Most “nearby” trajectory options are implied in the enacted movement. And the deeper or shallower grasp of this local dynamical landscape correlates with the more or less skillful enaction. Perceptual presence could perhaps be defined as sensitivity to the virtual coherence that surrounds actual action, i.e., the real (actualized or not) aspects of the agent-world engagement. The more coherent they are found to be, the more present. This would be phenomenologically consistent with Seth's proposal. Whether this sensitivity relies on counterfactually-rich HGMs, or alter-native—even non-representational(!)—mechanisms, the fact remains that it must also involve some worldly constituents, but not simply as inputs for the correction of modeling errors, because inputs are only actual (movements, sensory activations); witness, e.g., the striking difference in dynamical signature between a situated agent and one being fed a recorded input (Aguilera et al., 2013). The worldly constituents of presence play a role in shaping the dynamical possibilities of the agent-world coupling as in the slope example. If this were not the case, then presence would be unrelated to worldliness and just in-the-head. If we eschew this possibility, we must also discard the sufficiency of counterfactual modeling richness for fully determining presence. This is not to say we must discard it as a factor affecting our sensitivity to virtuality if we were to continue exploring marriage arrangements between PP and SMCT; but on a more equal footing, as a theory of perception not-just-in-the-head.

Counterfactual Causation and Mental Causation

Abstract: Counterfactual conditionals have been appealed to in various ways to show how the mind can be causally efficacious. However, it has often been overestimated what the truth of certain counterfactuals actually indicates about causation. The paper first identifies four approaches that seem to commit precisely this mistake. The arguments discussed involve erroneous assumptions about the connection of counterfactual dependence and genuine causation, as well as a disregard of the requisite evaluation conditions of counterfactuals. In a second step, the paper uses the insights of the foregoing analyses to formulate a set of counterfactuals-based conditions that are characterized as sufficient to establish singular causal claims. The paper concludes that there are ample reasons to believe that some mental events satisfy all these conditions with respect to certain further events and, hence, that mental events sometimes are causes.

The effects of counterfactual defences on social judgements

Abstract: Research on counterfactuals (‘If only…’) has seldom considered the effects of counterfactual communication, especially in a defensive context. In three studies, we investigated the effects of counterfactual defences employed by politicians. We assumed that self-focused upward counterfactuals (‘If only I…, the outcome would have been better’) are a form of concession, otherfocused upward counterfactuals (‘If only they…, the outcome would have been better’) are a form of excuse, and self-focused downward counterfactuals (‘If only I…, the outcome would have been worse’) are a form of justification. In Study 1, a counterfactual defence led to a more positive evaluation of the politician than a corresponding factual defence. Of the two types of defence, the counterfactual defence reduced the extent to which the politician was held responsible for the past event and was perceived as more convincing. In Study 2, counterfactual excuse and counterfactual justification were equally effective and led to a more positive evaluation of the politician than counterfactual concession. In Study 3, the higher effectiveness of counterfactual justification was independent from perceived ideological similarity with the politician, supporting the strength of this defence. These results show that counterfactual defences provide subtle communication strategies that effectively influence social judgements. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

New foundations for counterfactuals

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.

Marking the counterfactual: ERP evidence for pragmatic processing of German subjunctives

Abstract: Counterfactual conditionals are frequently used in language to express potentially valid reasoning from factually false suppositions. Counterfactuals provide two pieces of information: their literal meaning expresses a suppositional dependency between an antecedent (If the dice had been rigged ...) and a consequent (… then the game would have been unfair). Their second, backgrounded meaning refers to the opposite state of affairs and suggests that, in fact, the dice were not rigged and the game was fair. Counterfactual antecedents are particularly intriguing because they set up a counterfactual world which is known to be false, but which is nevertheless kept to when evaluating the conditional’s consequent. In the last years several event-related potential (ERP) studies have targeted the processing of counterfactual consequents, yet counterfactual antecedents have remained unstudied. We present an EEG/ERP investigation which employed German conditionals to compare subjunctive mood (which marks counterfactuality) with indicative mood at the critical point of mood disambiguation via auxiliary introduction in the conditional’s antecedent. Conditional sentences were presented visually one word at a time. Participants completed an acceptability judgement and probe detection task which was not related to the critical manipulation of linguistic mood. ERPs at the point of mood disambiguation in the antecedent were compared between indicative and subjunctive. Our main finding is a transient negative deflection in frontal regions for subjunctive compared to indicative mood in a time-window of 450-600 ms. We discuss this novel finding in respect to working memory requirements for rule application and increased referential processing demands for the representation of counterfactuals’ dual meaning. Our result suggests that the counterfactually implied dual meaning is processed without any delay at the earliest point where counterfactuality is marked by subjunctive mood.

Counterfactuals, the National Economy, and Voting Choice

Abstract: Previous research has shown that counterfactual thinking (“if only…”) is related to event explanation, blame assignment, and future decisions. Using data from a large-scale electoral panel survey (ITANES), we investigated the association between pre-election counterfactual thoughts on the national economy and subsequent voting choice. Results revealed that voters focused counterfactuals on the government and other political or economic actors but also, and more frequently, on unspecified or reified actors. Whereas counterfactuals focused on the government were associated with voting for the challenger, counterfactuals focused on political or economic actors or on reified actors were associated with voting for the incumbent. These associations were even stronger when counterfactuals had a subtractive (“if only X had not…”) rather than an additive (“if only X had…”) structure. The inclusion of the targets of the counterfactuals added significantly to the predictive value of a model of voting choice based on voters’ evaluation of the national economy.

The real, the fake, and the fake fake: In counterfactual conditionals, crosslinguistically

Abstract: This dissertation explores the expression of counterfactuality crosslinguistically, both from a morpho-syntactic/semantic perspective - focusing on the interaction between tense, aspect, mood and modality - and from a semantic/pragmatic perspective - focusing on the presuppositions and implicatures of counterfactual conditionals Through special emphasis on Palestinian Arabic, this dissertation contributes an enlightening perspective on the typological dimension of counterfactuals By offering a description and analysis of novel data, this dissertation shows that the relative morpho-syntactic transparency with which Palestinian Arabic expresses counterfactuals offers an illuminating view on puzzling crosslinguistic data In doing so, this dissertation sheds light on and helps discriminate among existing accounts of counterfactuality This dissertation also adds clarity to the semantic dimension of counterfactuals by proposing a compositional/dynamic account that might be crosslinguistically unifying for counterfactual conditionals and their use in context This study is of interest to scholars concerned with issues related to the typology, syntax, and semantics of counterfactual conditionals, as well as those involved in the inquiry into the syntax/semantics interface in the tradition of Generative Grammar or those interested in Dynamic Semantics

Not the Eads Bridge: An Exploration of Counterfactual History of Technology

Abstract: General readers enjoy counterfactual histories, “what if” scenarios that rewrite history. Academic historians seldom write explicit counterfactuals, despite their value in isolating the causes and contingencies that shaped events. Surprisingly, historians of technology have ignored this analytic tool, even though firms and engineers commonly considered alternative designs and actions while developing a product or technology. This article provides a “constrained counterfactual,” comparing two designs for bridges across the Mississippi River at St. Louis, both proposed in 1867: the Eads Bridge, and the Boomer/Post bridge. It covers three topics: exploring the conventional narratives on the Eads Bridge (completed in 1874); comparing the Eads design to that of the Boomer/Post alternative; and offering a counterfactual service life for that proposed crossing. The article seeks to isolate why James Eads’s design and his company succeeded, and to show the analytic value of counterfactuals for historians of technology.

Wins above replacement: Responsibility attributions as counterfactual replacements - eScholarship

Abstract: Wins above replacement: Responsibility attributions as counterfactual replacements Tobias Gerstenberg 1 (tger@mit.edu), Tomer D. Ullman 1 (tomeru@mit.edu), Max Kleiman-Weiner 1 (maxkw@mit.edu) David A. Lagnado 2 (d.lagnado@ucl.ac.uk) & Joshua B. Tenenbaum 1 (jbt@mit.edu) 1 Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 Perceptual and Brain Sciences, University College London, London WC1H 0AP 2 Cognitive, Abstract In order to be held responsible, a person’s action has to have made some sort of difference to the outcome. In this pa- per, we propose a counterfactual replacement model accord- ing to which people attribute responsibility by comparing their prior expectation about how an agent was going to act in a given situation, with their posterior expectation after having observed the agent’s action. The model predicts blame if the posterior expectation is worse than the prior expectation and credit if it is better. In a novel experiment, we manipulate peo- ple’s prior expectations by changing the framing of a struc- turally isomorphic task. As predicted by our counterfactual replacement model, people’s prior expectations significantly influenced their responsibility attributions. We also show how our model can capture Johnson and Rips’s (2013) findings that an agent is attributed less responsibility for bringing about a positive outcome when their action was suboptimal rather than optimal. Keywords: counterfactuals; responsibility; Bayesian infer- ence; attribution; theory of mind. Introduction How do we hold others responsible for their actions? There is a strong intuition that someone can only be held responsible if what they did made a difference to the outcome. There are at least two ways to assess the extent to which a person made a difference to the outcome. The first way is to consider an action-centered contrast and compare the actual action a per- son took with alternative actions she could have taken. Imag- ine a Dr. Smith who administers a treatment that causes a patient to suffer from severe side effects. If there were al- ternative options that would have led to a better outcome for the patient, we might blame Dr. Smith for the choice she made. In contrast, if we believe that the alternative options would have led to even worse side-effects, we might think Dr. Smith’s decision is creditworthy. The second way to as- sess difference-making is to consider a person-centered con- trast and compare what a person did with what other persons would have done in the same situation. We might not blame Dr. Smith for the negative outcome – even if there was an al- ternative treatment that would have been better for the patient – if we believe that other doctors would have prescribed the same treatment in her place. In the law, we find both action-centered and person- centered contrasts. According to the “but-for test”, a defen- dant’s action is deemed a factual cause of a negative outcome if the outcome would not have occurred but for his action (Hart & Honor´e, 1959/1985). According to the “reason- able man test”, whether a person’s behavior is deemed negli- gent depends on what a reasonable man would have done in the given situation (Schaffer, 2010). Another example of a person-centered contrast is found in baseball, where a statis- tic called “Wins Above Replacement” (WAR) expresses the additional number of wins a player contributes to the team’s success, compared to the estimated number of wins the team would have achieved with a replacement (Jensen, 2013). Previous work in psychology has shown that both action- centered and person-centered counterfactual contrasts influ- ence responsibility attributions. For example, according to Brewer (1977), responsibility attributions are (i) negatively related to the subjective probability that the outcome would have occurred in the absence of the person’s action, and (ii) positively related to the subjective probability that the out- come will occur given the person’s action (see also Petro- celli, Percy, Sherman, & Tormala, 2011; Spellman, 1997). Fincham and Jaspars (1983) showed in a series of experi- ments that responsibility attributions are also significantly in- fluenced by the subjective degree of belief that another person would have acted in the same way as the protagonist did in the given situation. In this paper, we propose a formal model of responsibil- ity attribution that is based on the person-centered contrast. Inspired by the “reasonable man test” and WAR, we model people’s intuitive judgments of blame and credit in terms of counterfactual replacements. Our counterfactual replacement model predicts that people assign blame or credit by compar- ing their prior expectations about how likely a person is to bring about a positive outcome in a given situation, with their posterior expectations after they have observed the person’s action. The more a person’s action changes our expectation for the better, the more credit we give that person for their action (cf. Ajzen & Fishbein, 1975). Conversely, we blame a person to the extent that our expectations decrease after hav- ing observed their action. A key advantage of our model over action-centered ac- counts is the natural way in which it captures how intentional and accidental actions are deserving of different degrees of responsibility (Lagnado & Channon, 2008). Our model pre- dicts that responsibility attributions are a function of the ex- tent to which the observation of a person’s action leads us to change our expectations about their future behavior. In- tentional actions potentially carry rich information about the person’s invariant character traits that are predictive of their future behavior. Accidental actions, in contrast, usually carry less information about the person’s character (Heider, 1958). By explicitly modeling prior expectations about a person’s characteristics, our model incorporates normative considera- tions for action from action-centered accounts of responsi- bility attribution. Most situations in which questions of re-

'Fake Tense' in Counterfactuals : A Temporal Remoteness Approach

Abstract: Cross-linguistically, counterfactual conditionals are often built by inserting an additional layer of tense morphology, known as ‘fake’ tense. The present paper combines and further develops two intuitive ideas from the literature in the analysis of these conditionals: ‘fake’ tense signals a temporal back shift scoping over the entire conditional (Dudman 1983, 1984) and the remaining tense morphology locates the hypothetical event with respect to the speech index i0. Implementing these ideas gives rise to two challenges: a mismatch between the surface location and the interpretation site of ‘fake tense’ and the lack of linearization between the index i’ quantified by the conditional and the speech index i0. We propose to solve these problems by applying interpretive mechanisms independently motivated in sequence of tense and double access readings. Finally, the new proposal is compared with previous accounts within the temporal remoteness line.

If Metrical Structure Were Not Dynamical, Counterfactuals in General Relativity Would Be Easy

Abstract: General relativity poses serious problems for counterfactual propositions peculiar to it as a physical theory. Because these problems arise solely from the dynamical nature of spacetime geometry, they are shared by all schools of thought on how counterfactuals should be interpreted and understood. Given the role of counterfactuals in the characterization of, inter alia, many accounts of scientific laws, theory confirmation and causation, general relativity once again presents us with idiosyncratic puzzles any attempt to analyze and understand the nature of scientific knowledge must face.

Elusive phenomenology, counterfactual awareness, and presence without mastery.

Abstract: Seth’s counterfactual-based predictive processing account of presence is compelling and innovative; it gives a new, deeper understanding of a critical aspect of our phenomenology. Remaining in overall agreement with Seth’s use of the prediction error minimization framework, I consider the elusive concept of presence, I probe the exact role of counterfactuals in the phenomenology of presence, and I suggest that some aspects of sense of presence can be accounted for by hierarchical inference without direct appeal to predictive processing of sensorimotor contingencies.

Lowe's Argument Against the Psychoneural Token Identity Thesis

Abstract: E. J. Lowe argues that the mental event token cannot be identical to the complex neural event token for they have different counterfactual properties. If the mental event had not occurred, the behavior would not have ensued, while if the neural event had not occurred, the behavior would have ensued albeit slightly differently. Lowe's argument for the neural counterfactual relies on standard possible world semantics, whose evaluation of such counterfactuals is problematic. His argument for the mental counterfactual relies on a premise that is plausibly false. My arguments support other counterfactuals, which are consistent with identity theories.