Counterpossibles, Counternomics and Causal Theories of Properties
Alter Senatssaal, University of Cologne, Albertus-Magnus-Platz, 50923 Cologne
Apr. 11 - 12, 2019
Alter Senatssaal, University of Cologne, Albertus-Magnus-Platz, 50923 Cologne
Apr. 11 - 12, 2019
Description
Counternomic and counterpossible reasoning seems to be ubiquitous in scientific discourse as well as in everyday contexts. Scientists investigate models representing counternomic situations, most people are disposed to be surprised if it turns out that Newton’s second law is false, and anybody with basic knowledge of mathematics tends to be disconcerted when encountering a proof that pi = 4.
From a metaphysical perspective, however, counternomics and counterpossibles pose several challenges. It is an open question whether causal theories of properties can handle counternomic and counterpossible dispositions, how we are to determine the truth conditions of counterfactuals having counternomic and counterpossible antecedents and to what extent nomologically or metaphysically impossible events can enter into causal relations.
This in turn raises the more general question whether metaphysics should try to accommodate counternomic and counterpossible reasoning or whether intuitions about counternomic and counterpossible situations can rather be explained away and do not have strong metaphysical implications. The aim of this workshop is to explore these issues in detail and to discuss the prospects of a coherent account of counterfactual and counternomic reasoning in everyday thought and in scientific practice.
Counternomic and counterpossible reasoning seems to be ubiquitous in scientific discourse as well as in everyday contexts. Scientists investigate models representing counternomic situations, most people are disposed to be surprised if it turns out that Newton’s second law is false, and anybody with basic knowledge of mathematics tends to be disconcerted when encountering a proof that pi = 4.
From a metaphysical perspective, however, counternomics and counterpossibles pose several challenges. It is an open question whether causal theories of properties can handle counternomic and counterpossible dispositions, how we are to determine the truth conditions of counterfactuals having counternomic and counterpossible antecedents and to what extent nomologically or metaphysically impossible events can enter into causal relations.
This in turn raises the more general question whether metaphysics should try to accommodate counternomic and counterpossible reasoning or whether intuitions about counternomic and counterpossible situations can rather be explained away and do not have strong metaphysical implications. The aim of this workshop is to explore these issues in detail and to discuss the prospects of a coherent account of counterfactual and counternomic reasoning in everyday thought and in scientific practice.
Invited Speakers
It is funded by the DFG (German Research Foundation) research group FOR 2495 Inductive Metaphysics.
- Sara Bernstein (Notre Dame)
- Mark Jago (Nottingham)
- Dennis Lehmkuhl (Bonn)
- Niels Linnemann (Geneva)
- Daniel Nolan (Notre Dame)
- Matt Tugby (Durham)
- Alastair Wilson (Birmingham)
It is funded by the DFG (German Research Foundation) research group FOR 2495 Inductive Metaphysics.
Program
Thursday, Apr. 11
Thursday, Apr. 11
|
09:00 – 09:15
09:15 – 10:15 10:15 – 10.30 10:30 – 11:30 11:30 – 13.00 13:00 – 14:00 14.00 – 14.15 14:15 – 15:15 17.00 – 18.30 19:30 - |
Coffee and welcome
Sara Bernstein (Notre Dame): "Countersocial Counterfactuals" Coffee break Michael Hicks (University of Cologne): "Three Roads for Humeanism" Lunch break Mark Jago (University of Nottingham): "Impossible grounding" Coffee break Daniel Nolan (Notre Dame): "Counterpossibles, Consequence and Context" Guided tour of the historic center of Cologne Dinner at Brauhaus Pütz |
Friday, Apr. 12
|
09.30 – 10.00
10:00 – 11:00 11:00 – 11.15 11:15 – 12:15 12:15 – 14.00 14:00 – 15:00 15:00 – 16:00 16.00 – 16.30 16.30 – 17.30 19:00 - |
Coffee
Matthew Tugby (University of Durham): "Alien Potentialities" Coffee break Vera Hoffmann-Kolss (University of Cologne): "Interventionism, Counterpossibles and Causal Theories of Properties" Lunch break Niels Linnemann (University of Geneva): "Metaphysically Necessary Laws from Physics?" Dennis Lehmkuhl (University of Bonn): "Counternomics and the Practice of Physics" Coffee break Alastair Wilson (University of Birmingham): "Counterpossible Reasoning in Physics" Dinner at Café Feynsinn |
Abstracts
Sara Bernstein: "Countersocial Counterfactuals"
We often reason about what our lives would have been like if we had belonged to different social groups: “If I had been African-American, being pulled over by police would have been scarier”, or “If I had not been a woman, I would have had an easier time in that meeting.” This talk makes sense of such countersocial counterfactuals, conditionals whose antecedents run contrary to social facts. Though some countersocials are counterpossibles, not all of them are. Even counterpossible countersocials are non-vacuous. A hyperintensional framework for evaluating countersocials permits neutrality on the question of whether or not membership in certain social categories is an essential feature of individuals. I conclude by suggesting that a plausible similarity metric for countersocial counterfactuals must take into account the nature of unitary and intersectional social groups.
Michael Hicks: "Three Roads for Humeanism"
Since John Carroll's 1994 book "Laws of Nature", iterated or nested counterfactuals have been a recognized problem for the Humean view of laws. The problem is twofold: first, we often use the laws of the actual world to evaluate counterfactuals at very simple worlds. But according to the Humean Best Systems Analysis, those worlds have different laws, and so different counterfactuals hold there. Second, when evaluating scientific theories, we often idealize multiple simple worlds as models which agree about particular matters of fact but have different laws; this directly violates Humean Supervenience.
The traditional Humean line has been to bite the bullet on these examples, or argue that they are motivated by illicit non-Humean intuitions. But recently, a number of authors, including Jaag and Loew and Bhogal, have argued that the intuitive, and apparently anti-Humean, reading of these examples is in line with Humean motivations for counterfactual reasoning. This puts the Humean in a double-bind: the Humean motivation for using counterfactuals does not square with the Humean semantics for counterfactuals. Here, I overview three ways the Humean can escape this bind and get the right verdict on nested counterfactuals: first, she can use contextualist semantics for counterfactuals (a la Roberts 2008); second, she can follow Lewis (1994) and hold that Humeanism is metaphysically contingent; or third, she can follow Bhogal (forthcoming) and hold that counterfactuals range over metaphysically impossible worlds. I'll argue against the first option and in favor of the final two, and claim that deciding between them requires more clarity on the role of metaphysical possibility.
Vera Hoffmann-Kolss: "Interventionism, Counterpossibles and Causal Theories of Properties"
Under what conditions is a property P identical with a property Q? Interventionist theories of causation and causal models seem to provide a prima facie plausible answer to this question: P and Q are identical iff they (or the variables representing them) assume exactly the same position in all possible causal models. This criterion is problematic, however, if properties are individuated hyperintensionally, that is, if there are properties P and Q that are distinct, but instantiated by the same individuals at all possible worlds. In this paper, I investigate whether causal modeling frameworks can overcome this difficulty if causal relations can be characterized in terms of counterpossible conditionals.
Mark Jago: "Impossible Grounding"
This is a talk about impossible situations and counterfactual impossibilities, in three parts. In the first, I offer some reasons for thinking the standard closest-worlds treatment of counterfactuals will not carry over to impossible worlds. In the second, I offer an analysis of metaphysical necessity based on a theory of grounding. An advantage of the approach is that it allows much of the structure of possible worlds to carry over to impossible worlds. In the third part, I consider an approach to counterfactuals which fits well with this framework. Following Fine, semantics for counterfactuals is given in terms of truthmakers. Fine’s approach has two main deficiencies: it does not accommodate impossible worlds and it does not allow for embedded conditionals. I’ll briefly sketch some attempts to overcome these difficulties.
Dennis Lehmkuhl: "Counternomics and the Practice of Physics"
Counternomics are often described as counterfactual statements of the form “If (scientific theory X) had been true, then (Y) would have been the case”, where X might be “Newton’s theory of gravity” and Y might be “the gravitational interaction would propagate at infinite speed”. There are interesting questions concerning the truth conditions of such a sentence, and what kind of evidence could confirm such a sentence, if any. In this talk, I want to ask how the alleged existence of counternomic statements fits with the development of scientific practice, especially in physics. We are sure that classical electrodynamics is false in certain well-defined regimes, but we are not sure (or should not be sure) that general relativity (GR) and quantum field theories (QFTs) are false, and if so in which regimes exactly. As a result, we don’t know wether we should evaluate sentences of the form “If GR had been true, then singularities would have been a generic feature of our universe” or “Given that GR is (approximately) true, singularities are a generic feature of our universe.” Indeed, the hallmark of the cautious realist, the use of “approximately true” in the antecedent of the second sentence, does a lot of work in evaluations of sentences of the latter kind. Does this cause problems for the distinction between (allegedly) nomologically true and (allegedly) counternomic sentences? I shall discuss this question in the light of the practice and historical development of gravitational physics.
Niels Linnemann: "Metaphysically Necessary Laws from Physics?"
Fine (2002) argues that natural necessity can neither be obtained from metaphysical necessity via forms of restriction nor of relativisation – and therefore pleads for modal pluralism with respect to natural and metaphysical necessity. Aiming at applying Fine’s view to the laws of nature, Wolff (2013) argues that specific conservation laws from physics earn the label of "metaphysically necessary laws". I critically discuss Wollf’s examples, as well as the general undertaking.
Daniel Nolan: "Counterpossibles, Consequence and Context"
What is the connection between valid inference and true conditionals? Many conditional logics require that when A is a logical consequence of B, "if A then B" is true. Taking counterlogical conditionals seriously leads to systems that permit counterexamples to that general rule. However, this leaves those of us who endorse non-trivial accounts of counterpossible conditionals to explain what the connection between conditionals and consequence is. The explanation of the connection also answers a common line of objection to non-trivial counterpossibles, which is based on a transition from valid arguments to the corresponding conditionals. It also contributes to the wider project of illuminating the connections between contexts of utterance, on the one hand, and the truth-conditions of conditionals uttered in those contexts, on the other.
Matthew Tugby: "Alien Potentialities"
In this paper I discuss a problem for dispositional analyses of modality, such as the potentiality theory developed by Vetter (2015). A consequence of Vetter’s potentiality theory is that instantiations of so-called super-alien properties are metaphysically impossible. I argue that this consequence is problematic. Many counterlegal statements (counterfactuals whose antecedents are physically impossible) make reference to super-alien properties and many of these statements appear to be true in a substantive, non-vacuous way. However, it seems that Vetter’s theory does not have the resources to provide truthmakers for these counterlegal statements. The solution I propose is to supplement the dispositional theory with a Platonic theory of properties, which allows the existence of super-alien properties – properties that are uninstantiated but whose instantiation is metaphysically possible. I also argue that a Platonic version of dispositionalism can solve certain puzzles regarding non-super alien properties.
Alastair Wilson: "Counterpossible Reasoning in Physics"
This talk explores some ways in which physics may involve us in counterpossible reasoning: by considering impossible theories, by considering impossible models of possible theories, and by invoking impossible interventions in the characterization of causal structure and/or grounding structure.
Sara Bernstein: "Countersocial Counterfactuals"
We often reason about what our lives would have been like if we had belonged to different social groups: “If I had been African-American, being pulled over by police would have been scarier”, or “If I had not been a woman, I would have had an easier time in that meeting.” This talk makes sense of such countersocial counterfactuals, conditionals whose antecedents run contrary to social facts. Though some countersocials are counterpossibles, not all of them are. Even counterpossible countersocials are non-vacuous. A hyperintensional framework for evaluating countersocials permits neutrality on the question of whether or not membership in certain social categories is an essential feature of individuals. I conclude by suggesting that a plausible similarity metric for countersocial counterfactuals must take into account the nature of unitary and intersectional social groups.
Michael Hicks: "Three Roads for Humeanism"
Since John Carroll's 1994 book "Laws of Nature", iterated or nested counterfactuals have been a recognized problem for the Humean view of laws. The problem is twofold: first, we often use the laws of the actual world to evaluate counterfactuals at very simple worlds. But according to the Humean Best Systems Analysis, those worlds have different laws, and so different counterfactuals hold there. Second, when evaluating scientific theories, we often idealize multiple simple worlds as models which agree about particular matters of fact but have different laws; this directly violates Humean Supervenience.
The traditional Humean line has been to bite the bullet on these examples, or argue that they are motivated by illicit non-Humean intuitions. But recently, a number of authors, including Jaag and Loew and Bhogal, have argued that the intuitive, and apparently anti-Humean, reading of these examples is in line with Humean motivations for counterfactual reasoning. This puts the Humean in a double-bind: the Humean motivation for using counterfactuals does not square with the Humean semantics for counterfactuals. Here, I overview three ways the Humean can escape this bind and get the right verdict on nested counterfactuals: first, she can use contextualist semantics for counterfactuals (a la Roberts 2008); second, she can follow Lewis (1994) and hold that Humeanism is metaphysically contingent; or third, she can follow Bhogal (forthcoming) and hold that counterfactuals range over metaphysically impossible worlds. I'll argue against the first option and in favor of the final two, and claim that deciding between them requires more clarity on the role of metaphysical possibility.
Vera Hoffmann-Kolss: "Interventionism, Counterpossibles and Causal Theories of Properties"
Under what conditions is a property P identical with a property Q? Interventionist theories of causation and causal models seem to provide a prima facie plausible answer to this question: P and Q are identical iff they (or the variables representing them) assume exactly the same position in all possible causal models. This criterion is problematic, however, if properties are individuated hyperintensionally, that is, if there are properties P and Q that are distinct, but instantiated by the same individuals at all possible worlds. In this paper, I investigate whether causal modeling frameworks can overcome this difficulty if causal relations can be characterized in terms of counterpossible conditionals.
Mark Jago: "Impossible Grounding"
This is a talk about impossible situations and counterfactual impossibilities, in three parts. In the first, I offer some reasons for thinking the standard closest-worlds treatment of counterfactuals will not carry over to impossible worlds. In the second, I offer an analysis of metaphysical necessity based on a theory of grounding. An advantage of the approach is that it allows much of the structure of possible worlds to carry over to impossible worlds. In the third part, I consider an approach to counterfactuals which fits well with this framework. Following Fine, semantics for counterfactuals is given in terms of truthmakers. Fine’s approach has two main deficiencies: it does not accommodate impossible worlds and it does not allow for embedded conditionals. I’ll briefly sketch some attempts to overcome these difficulties.
Dennis Lehmkuhl: "Counternomics and the Practice of Physics"
Counternomics are often described as counterfactual statements of the form “If (scientific theory X) had been true, then (Y) would have been the case”, where X might be “Newton’s theory of gravity” and Y might be “the gravitational interaction would propagate at infinite speed”. There are interesting questions concerning the truth conditions of such a sentence, and what kind of evidence could confirm such a sentence, if any. In this talk, I want to ask how the alleged existence of counternomic statements fits with the development of scientific practice, especially in physics. We are sure that classical electrodynamics is false in certain well-defined regimes, but we are not sure (or should not be sure) that general relativity (GR) and quantum field theories (QFTs) are false, and if so in which regimes exactly. As a result, we don’t know wether we should evaluate sentences of the form “If GR had been true, then singularities would have been a generic feature of our universe” or “Given that GR is (approximately) true, singularities are a generic feature of our universe.” Indeed, the hallmark of the cautious realist, the use of “approximately true” in the antecedent of the second sentence, does a lot of work in evaluations of sentences of the latter kind. Does this cause problems for the distinction between (allegedly) nomologically true and (allegedly) counternomic sentences? I shall discuss this question in the light of the practice and historical development of gravitational physics.
Niels Linnemann: "Metaphysically Necessary Laws from Physics?"
Fine (2002) argues that natural necessity can neither be obtained from metaphysical necessity via forms of restriction nor of relativisation – and therefore pleads for modal pluralism with respect to natural and metaphysical necessity. Aiming at applying Fine’s view to the laws of nature, Wolff (2013) argues that specific conservation laws from physics earn the label of "metaphysically necessary laws". I critically discuss Wollf’s examples, as well as the general undertaking.
Daniel Nolan: "Counterpossibles, Consequence and Context"
What is the connection between valid inference and true conditionals? Many conditional logics require that when A is a logical consequence of B, "if A then B" is true. Taking counterlogical conditionals seriously leads to systems that permit counterexamples to that general rule. However, this leaves those of us who endorse non-trivial accounts of counterpossible conditionals to explain what the connection between conditionals and consequence is. The explanation of the connection also answers a common line of objection to non-trivial counterpossibles, which is based on a transition from valid arguments to the corresponding conditionals. It also contributes to the wider project of illuminating the connections between contexts of utterance, on the one hand, and the truth-conditions of conditionals uttered in those contexts, on the other.
Matthew Tugby: "Alien Potentialities"
In this paper I discuss a problem for dispositional analyses of modality, such as the potentiality theory developed by Vetter (2015). A consequence of Vetter’s potentiality theory is that instantiations of so-called super-alien properties are metaphysically impossible. I argue that this consequence is problematic. Many counterlegal statements (counterfactuals whose antecedents are physically impossible) make reference to super-alien properties and many of these statements appear to be true in a substantive, non-vacuous way. However, it seems that Vetter’s theory does not have the resources to provide truthmakers for these counterlegal statements. The solution I propose is to supplement the dispositional theory with a Platonic theory of properties, which allows the existence of super-alien properties – properties that are uninstantiated but whose instantiation is metaphysically possible. I also argue that a Platonic version of dispositionalism can solve certain puzzles regarding non-super alien properties.
Alastair Wilson: "Counterpossible Reasoning in Physics"
This talk explores some ways in which physics may involve us in counterpossible reasoning: by considering impossible theories, by considering impossible models of possible theories, and by invoking impossible interventions in the characterization of causal structure and/or grounding structure.
Registration
If you would like to participate, please send an e-mail to Vera-Hoffmann-Kolss (vera.hoffmann-kolss@uni-koeln.de).
If you would like to participate, please send an e-mail to Vera-Hoffmann-Kolss (vera.hoffmann-kolss@uni-koeln.de).
