Abstract
An incorrect interpretation of Goodman’s theory of counterfactuals is persistently being offered in the literature. I find that strange. Even more so since the incorrectness is rather obvious. In this paper I try to figure out why is that happening. First I try to explain what Goodman did say, which of his claims are ignored, and what he did not say but is sometimes ascribed to him. I emphasize one of the bad features of the interpretation: it gives counterfactuals some formal properties that neither Goodman nor (usually) the interpreter would accept. The usual interpretation (UI), which I claim should not be ascribed to Goodman, considers a counterfactual \(\mathrm{A}\rightarrow \mathrm{C}\) true iff A, together with natural laws and all contingent truths cotenable with it, entails C. (UI) makes valid the law of conditional excluded middle, which Goodman clearly rejected. Among possible reasons for which the interpreters might find (UI) adequate is that (UI), as I argue, smuggles in the idea of minimal change, which is otherwise attractive, natural to many, but not to be found anywhere in Goodman’s paper. At the end I stress the significance of Goodman’s theory by arguing that we still need some of his notions to test the adequacy of our modern theories.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Edgington [6, p. 248]. The interpretation says: “A counterfactual conditional ‘\(A\rightarrow C\)’ is true if and only if there is a conjunction of truths T which include a law of nature [and satisfy condition X] such that \(A\& T\) entails C.” And a bit later on the same page: “Then the square bracket reads ‘and are cotenable with A’.”
- 3.
Loewer [15, p. 106]: “It is interesting to note that had we construed Goodman’s definition of cotenability as requiring that A be cotenable with each member of S rather than with the conjunction of the members of S we would have obtained a system in which CEM is valid.”
- 4.
The rule RCK that allows the last step need not concerns us here. The book used to be available on-line at http://www.phil.gu.se/johan/johan.html and the page number refers to the version downloaded from that site.
- 5.
See Nute’s classification of minimal, small, and maximal change theories in Nute and Cross [17].
- 6.
This system is the same as Stalnaker’s minus CEM. Cf. Lewis [13, chapter 6].
- 7.
These theories are know in the literature under different names. Lewis [13] called them “metalinguistic”, and later [14] thought that “premise semantics” was a better name. Bennett [2, p. 303] calls them “support” theories. Hansson [12] uses the term “derivability theory”. Arlo-Costa [1] calls them “cotenability theories”.
- 8.
It is often just assumed that such a simple requirement as (*) is obeyed by a possible world theory, but it is not a trivial matter. In [4, chapters 4 and 5], and [5] I have argued that the so called standard theories of counterfactuals (more precisely, any total ordering minimal or small change semantics for counterfactuals based on an absolute similarity relation or selection function) cannot fulfil that requirement, which makes them inadequate.
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Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments I would like to thank Miloš Arsenijević, Bernie Linsky, Adam Morton, Jelena Ostojić, and Jeff Pelletier for helpful discussions, and an anonymous referee for pointing to some mistakes.
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Djordjević, V. (2012). Goodman’s Only World. In: Trobok, M., Miščević, N., Žarnić, B. (eds) Between Logic and Reality. Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science, vol 25. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2390-0_15
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