Abstract
The standard Lewis–Stalnaker semantics of counterfactuals, given the Strong Centering Thesis, implies that all true–true counterfactuals are trivially true. McGlynn (Analysis 72:276–285, 2012) developed a theory, based on Penczek (Erkenntnis 46:79–85, 1997), to rehabilitate the non-triviality of true–true counterfactuals. I show here that counterfactuals with true but irrelevant components are counterexamples to McGlynn’s account. I argue that an extended version of the connection hypothesis is sustainable, and grounds a full theory of counterfactuals explicable in a broadly standard way, if an indispensable asymmetry between semifacuals and other counterfactuals is acknowledged.
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Notes
Some philosophers might find this disputable. Pollock, for instance, thinks that “the idea of the magnitude of change is not the same as that of the comparative similarity of worlds” (Pollock 1976, p. 21). He would probably argue that a change yielding two heads up is no greater dissimilarity-making than one yielding only one head up. Nothing of substance here, however, hinges on that. For whatever the ordering of similarity one may favor, worlds where one head came up and I lost are certainly no less close to the actual world than worlds where two heads came up and I won.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank an anonymous referee of this journal for very helpful comments and advices on earlier versions of this paper. I’m also grateful to Aidan McGlynn, Una Stojnic, Simon Goldstein for their valuable comments and kind help on various points. This research was funded by a Humanities and Social Sciences Project of the Ministry of Education of China (No. 13YJC720014).
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He, C. Conjunction, Connection and Counterfactuals. Erkenn 81, 705–719 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-015-9763-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-015-9763-9