Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-42gr6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T21:04:08.926Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Counterfactuals of Ontological Dependence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

SAM BARON Open the ORCID record for SAM BARON [Opens in a new window]
SAM BARON*
Affiliation:
DIANOIA INSTITUTE OF PHILOSOPHY, AUSTRALIAN CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY samuel.baron@acu.edu.au
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A great deal has been written about ‘would’ counterfactuals of causal dependence. Comparatively little has been said regarding ‘would’ counterfactuals of ontological dependence. The standard Lewis-Stalnaker semantics is inadequate for handling such counterfactuals. That is because some of these counterfactuals are counterpossibles, and the standard Lewis-Stalnaker semantics trivializes for counterpossibles. Fortunately, there is a straightforward extension of the Lewis-Stalnaker semantics available that handles counterpossibles: simply take Lewis's closeness relation that orders possible worlds and unleash it across impossible worlds. To apply the extended semantics, an account of the closeness relation for counterpossibles is needed. In this article, I offer a strategy for evaluating ‘would’ counterfactuals of ontological dependence that understands closeness between worlds in terms of the metaphysical concept of grounding.

Keywords

counterfactualsontological dependencegroundingmetaphysical lawscounterpossibles
Type
Article
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , Summer 2022 , pp. 278 - 299
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Philosophical Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I thank Ray Briggs, Jonathan Schaffer, and Alastair Wilson for comments on earlier drafts of this article. I also thank the attendees at a Rutgers postgraduate metaphysics reading group where a very early version of this article was presented. Finally, I thank two referees of this journal for their extremely helpful feedback. Work on this article was funded in part by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DE180100414).

References

Beall, J. C., and van Fraassen, Bas C.. (2003) Possibilities and Paradox: An Introduction to Modal and Many-Valued Logic. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bennett, Karen. (2011) ‘By Our Bootstraps’. Philosophical Perspectives, 25, 327–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berto, Francesco, French, Rohan, Priest, Graham, and Ripley, David. (2018) ‘Williamson on Counterpossibles’. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 47, 693–713.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bjerring, Jens Christian. (2014) ‘On Counterpossibles’. Philosophical Studies, 168, 327–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
deRosset, Louis. (2013) ‘Grounding Explanations’. Philosophers’ Imprint, 13, 1–26.Google Scholar
Fine, Kit. (1975) Review of Counterfactuals by David Lewis. Mind, 84, 451–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fine, Kit. (2012) ‘Guide to Ground’. In Correia, Fabrice and Schnieder, Benjamin (eds.), Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 37–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jago, Mark. (2015) ‘Impossible Worlds’, Noûs, 49, 713–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jenkins, C. S. (2011) ‘Is Metaphysical Dependence Irreflexive?’ Monist, 94, 267–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, Jaegwon. (1973) ‘Causes and Counterfactuals’. Journal of Philosophy, 70, 570–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kment, Boris. (2014) Modality and Explanatory Reasoning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, David. (1973) ‘Counterfactuals and Comparative Possibility’. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 2, 418–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, David. (1979) ‘Counterfactual Dependence and Time's Arrow’. Noûs, 13, 455–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, David. (1987) ‘Events’. In Philosophical Papers, vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 242–70.Google Scholar
Mares, Edwin D. (1997) ‘Who's Afraid of Impossible Worlds?’ Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 38, 516–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nolan, Daniel. (1997) ‘Impossible Worlds: A Modest Approach’. Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 38, 535–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Priest, Graham. (2002) Beyond the Limits of Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Restall, Greg. (1997) ‘Ways Things Can't Be’. Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 38, 583–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ripley, David. (2012) ‘Structures and Circumstances: Two Ways to Fine-Grain Propositions’. Synthese, 189, 97–118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosen, Gideon. (2010) ‘Metaphysical Dependence: Grounding and Reduction’. In Hale, Bob and Hoffman, Aviv (eds.), Modality: Metaphysics, Logic and Epistemology (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 109–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schaffer, Jonathan. (2009) ‘On What Grounds What’. In Chalmers, David, Manley, David, and Wasserman, Ryan (eds.), Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundation of Ontology (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 347–83.Google Scholar
Schaffer, Jonathan. (2012) ‘Grounding, Transitivity, and Contrastivity’. In Correia, Fabrice and Schnieder, Benjamin (eds.), Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 122–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schaffer, Jonathan. (2016) ‘Grounding in the Image of Causation’. Philosophical Studies, 173, 49–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Naomi. (2016) ‘Metaphysical Interdependence’. In Jago, Mark (ed.), Reality Making (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 38–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vander Laan, David. (2004) ‘Counterpossibles and Similarity’. In Jackson, Frank and Priest, Graham (eds.), Lewisian Themes: The Philosophy of David K. Lewis (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 258–76.Google Scholar
Williamson, Timothy. (2013) Modal Logic as Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilsch, Tobias. (2015) ‘The Nomological Account of Ground’. Philosophical Studies, 172, 3293–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilsch, Tobias. (2016) ‘The Deductive-Nomological Account of Metaphysical Explanation’. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 94, 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar