Maybe you think you are in charge, or that physics doesn't apply to you because you are special?

For the rest of us, Unitary Quantum Mechanics solves the problem of the ontological status of counterfactuals. — tom

It's an empirical fact that I have never flipped a coin and measured it to be both heads and tails.

Right, then a counterfactual quantum event rather than a future quantum event. — Michael

What would be an example of a "counterfactual quantum event"?

How do you account for its truth, given that the laws of nature do not necessitate a particular outcome? — Michael

Peirce was ahead of his time in recognizing the reality of absolute chance; he held that the laws of nature are not completely exceptionless, such that the slight deviations in our measurements of phenomena are not solely due to error. In other words, all laws of nature are in that sense statistical, even the ones that we treat as deterministic.

I used to call them "counterfactuals," until someone on this forum insisted that by definition, this means that they must be "counter to fact." I switched to "subjunctive conditionals" to preclude any such terminological debates.

For the rest of us, Unitary Quantum Mechanics solves the problem of the ontological status of counterfactuals. — tom

I wonder how Unitary Quantum Mechanics deals with the semantics of counterfactual conditional statements that have counterlegal antecedents. (e.g. If Ceasar had led the First Golf War, he would have used catapults. Or, if photons had had a finite rest mass, then they wouldn't be traveling at c)

If I say, "if I were to strike this porcelain dish with a hammer, then it would shatter," or "if I had struck this porcelain dish with a hammer, then it would have shattered," both of these utterances seem to be truth-apt (that is, possessing a truth value), yet what do they "correspond" to? — Arkady

This notion of the truth seems to revolve around the meaning of words as opposed to states of affairs.

A fact it has been said is a fact regardless of argument or anything we say. So for example imagine you were in the matrix and made the claim if I strike this (..) It will shatter"
Now in reality nothing shatters in the matrix because it is an illusion.
So I don't see how words can ever capture the truth or rather facts unless you can say "This is definitely a fact beyond refute". But there is always room for skepticism and new theories.

If someone claims "if you touch the fire you will burn your hand" they are probably probably basing that on induction. I don't think they are committed to stating law but they are assuming a regularity but not committed to an absolute truth.

The problem I have, is with counterfactuals, that are not usually about things that may be physical "laws" but about whole series of events which have numerous factors involved and where the number of possibilities explodes. In these scenarios the likelihood of a claim having any truth value is vanishing it seems.

But still reality will be the final arbiter and language is unlikely predict the limitations of reality fully.

It's an empirical fact that I have never flipped a coin and measured it to be both heads and tails. — Michael

But if you were to flip a coin such that it landed on its side, then it would be neither heads nor tails. :D

What would be an example of a "counterfactual quantum event"? — aletheist

Some counterfactual claim about Schrodinger's cat, for example. "If I had opened the box at 3:00pm then I would have found the cat to be dead".

Peirce was ahead of his time in recognizing the reality of absolute chance; he held that the laws of nature are not completely exceptionless, such that the slight deviations in our measurements of phenomena are not solely due to error. In other words, all laws of nature are in that sense statistical, even the ones that we treat as deterministic.

Then how do you make sense of counterfactuals being true? If the laws of nature are not such that if we had done this then that must have happened (i.e. chance is involved), then your initial explanation doesn't work.

I used to call them "counterfactuals," until someone on this forum insisted that by definition, this means that they must be "counter to fact." I switched to "subjunctive conditionals" to preclude any such terminological debates. — aletheist

OK, but I think the OP meant discuss a semantical problem that is raised specifically by subjunctive conditionals that have a false antecedent -- that is, by counterfactual conditionals in the strict sense.

It's called decoherence. — tom

I know what it's called. Giving it a name doesn't address the issue.

OK, but I think the OP meant discuss a semantic problem that is raised specifically by subjunctive conditionals that have a false antecedent -- that is, by counterfactual conditionals in the strict sense. — Pierre-Normand

To explain this further, the OP raises a problem with the correspondence theory of truth. Statements are said to be true if they correspond to some obtaining state of affairs, but statements like "if A had happened then B would have happened" are said to be true even though neither A nor B are obtaining states of affairs.

Some counterfactual claim about Schrodinger's cat, for example. — Michael

I guess something more like, "If the bottle of poison were to be broken, then the cat would be dead." Not sure this gets at your point, though.

If the laws of nature are not such that if we had done this then that must have happened (i.e. chance is involved), then your initial explanation doesn't work. — Michael

It has to do with the idea that the habits of matter are so inveterate that any deviations from them are extremely minute. So a macro-level subjunctive conditional (e.g., that the stone would fall if released) is true, but a micro-level prediction (e.g., the magnitude of its acceleration) can still exhibit a chance discrepancy that is indistinguishable from measurement error.

To explain this further, the OP raises a problem with the correspondence theory of truth. Statements are said to be true if they correspond to some obtaining state of affairs, but statements like "if A had happened then B would have happened" are said to be true even though neither A nor B are obtaining states of affairs. — Michael

Indeed. This is also how I understood the problem.

Can there be a modal correspondence theory of truth?

I guess something more like, "If the bottle of poison were to be broken, then the cat would be dead." Not sure this gets at your point, though. — aletheist

No, that's not the same. The statement was "If I had opened the box at 3:00pm then I would have found the cat to be dead". The issue is that the laws of nature do not necessitate that the bottle of poison would have been broken at 3:00pm – and nor do they necessitate that the bottle wouldn't have been broken.

So how do you make sense of that statement's truth-value?

What about: "If Pierce had the power to see to it that the stone drops during a lecture, then, if Pierce had dropped the stone during a lecture, it would have fallen."

It seems just as true as the first sentence, but not to be ultimately grounded in some existent having any latent power. — csalisbury

This is a bit tricky because the truth of this sentence seems to entail the position Micheal Ayers labeled actualism (in his brilliant The Refutation of Determinism: An Essay in Philosophical Logic, London: Methuen (1968)). That is the position seemingly endorsed (at least tacitly) by many Humeans that whatever is possible is actual, and whatever isn't actual is impossible. This is also the view that there are no unactualized powers. That's because the subjunctive conditional statement that you propose would entail that the failure for Pierce to exercise his power would count as (conclusive) evidence that he lacks the power.

To explain this further, the OP raises a problem with the correspondence theory of truth. — Michael

The various theories of truth--correspondence, coherence, consensus, instrumental--only arise within the context of nominalism regarding generals. Pragmatic realism (i.e., pragmaticism) understands truth as encompassing all of these notions, because it is defined as what an infinite community of investigators would believe after an indefinite inquiry.

The statement was "If I had opened the box at 3:00pm then I would have found the cat to be dead" ... So how do you make sense of that statement's truth-value? — Michael

Perhaps under quantum theory, it does not have one. The proper subjunctive conditional for my approach would presumably be a probabilistic one, like my example of the coin flips.

That is the position seemingly endorsed (at least tacitly) by many Humeans that whatever is possible is actual, and whatever isn't actual is impossible. — Pierre-Normand

This seems like an alternative version of modal collapse, which today is widely (though not universally) considered to be a fallacy in modal logic. Usually it is presented as the claim that whatever is actual is necessary, hence it entails strict determinism.

Then how do you make sense of counterfactuals being true? If the laws of nature are not such that if we had done this then that must have happened (i.e. chance is involved), then your initial explanation doesn't work. — Michael

The role of counterfactuals is provide the empirical definiteness - the possible acts of measurement - by which we can take a statement or concept to be true.

So in Peircean terms, the world may not be completely constrained in the way we like to imagine, and yet still we can impose our conceptual map on reality and read off measurements (of the presence or absence of x) as a sign of the truth of something we might say.

So in folk physics, the audience watching Peirce with his stone will have a simple counterfactually framed expectation - that stone will fall when he lets go because it is heavy. And then when it does drop, that is the observable fact which is a sign that their belief structure was true. There was no counterfactual surprise to explain.

To then talk about a theory of gravitating masses is a more sophisticated mental framework. Part of what would be the sign of the theory's truth would be to be able to measure the earth being pulled towards the stone - and were that not the observed case, the theory is in trouble.

Likewise quantum mechanic predicts certain counterfactually-based outcomes - some chance of unpredictable fluctuations. And even thermodynamics predicts the unpredictability of all the atoms in the stone happening to thermally fluctuate upwards at the instant of release. That has to be a possibility - perhaps infinitely remote - if the deterministic statements of thermodynamics are true.

So the Peircean view of truth is triadic. Concepts are truth-apt to the degree they support a counterfactual-based notion of the signs or measurements that would make them so. This puts the act of measurement back in the mind of the observer of course. But it makes what is going on explicit. Truth is based on the signs that seem close enough to what we would expect to experience if x was the case, vs not-x being the case.

So the OPs problem was with counterfactuals being granted too much apparent reality. But it is instead the notion of the factual which is granted too much realness by naive or direct realists. Truth is always a judgement that we have been given the proper sign that some thought is right. And we can only aspire to that kind of certainty if we could also know for sure what it would have looked like instead for that belief to have been matchingly false.

This really bites when our ideas are in fact framed vaguely and so we can't possibly imagine what would count as evidence either way.

The various theories of truth--correspondence, coherence, consensus, instrumental--only arise within the context of nominalism regarding generals. Pragmatic realism (i.e., pragmaticism) understands truth as encompassing all of these notions, because it is defined as what an infinite community of investigators would believe after an indefinite inquiry. — aletheist

Hmmm... I would hope that that an ideal community of investigators would end up not merely producing a final theory that encompasses all the early theoretical attempts, but that it would also discard some false starts ;-)

Truth is always a judgement that we have been given the proper sign that some thought is right. — apokrisis

So verificationism?

That is the position seemingly endorsed (at least taci — Pierre-Normand

But modern physics - the path integral or sum over histories view - is more sophisticated in realising that many possiblities are contradictory in their actuality. If a particle could take the left slit, it could equally take the right, hence self interference as a statistically real fact.

So the quantum ontological view we have been forced to is that every possiblility is "virtually" actual, and yet much of that actuality is a self contradiction that suppresses actual actualisation. Instead what exists is the counterfactuality of all those possiblities not having happened ... and yet existing in a wavefunction fashion to have definitely constrained the space of the possible.

At the quantum level, counterfactuality is very real. It is the actual constraint on possibility by possibility itself.

Of course many find this weirdness too difficult to accept - hence the retreat back into deterministic interpretations like many worlds and their actual multiverses.

This seems like an alternative version of modal collapse, which today is widely (though not universally) considered to be a fallacy in modal logic. Usually it is presented as the claim that whatever is actual is necessary, hence it entails strict determinism. — aletheist

Interesting! Indeed, it seems to be equivalent.

1) Actual(P) entails Nec(P) (=def modal collapse)
2) Actual(~P) entails Nec(~P)
3) ~Nec(~P) entails ~Actual(~P)
4) Possible(P) entails P (=def actualism)

Interestingly enough, the route that leads to actualism (or to modal collapse) begins with a healthy dose of Humean skepticism about "natural necessity", or the necessities derived from a realist interpretation of nomological event causation. This leads the Humean skeptic to be equally skeptical about unactualized powers. The last step for the Humean skeptic is to retain the concept of a power but to narrow its scope of application strictly to actualized powers. What is ironical is that this conclusion then condones a strict metaphysical determinism: the strongest possible form of causal neccessitation!

So verificationism? — Michael

Yep. In the end, the default position has to be some bare instrumentalism.

But Peircean epistemology wants to offer more that that. It recognises also the fact that we are modelling the world with evolutionary purpose. There is an internal criterion in operation because - contra the simple positivist - we have interests at stake.

So that is deflationary of our truth-making. On the other hand, accepting we are motivated by purposes in modelling means we could decide to "tell the truth of reality" as our goal - leading to the usual search for maximum invariance in statements. And also it means that we can trust to a community of like minds - expect that a common purpose will drive the evolution of ideation towards some best outcome in the long run.

Verificationism is the bare bones position. Pragmatism fleshes out that view of truth so that it gives us choices about where we might want to sit on some scale of subjectivity~objectivity. It is a model of the modelling relation. So more interesting than mere instrumentalism.

Surely counterfactuals are a problem for verificationism. How do you verify "if X had happened then Y would have happened"?

Surely counterfactuals are a problem for verificationism. How do you verify "if X had happened then Y would have happened"? — Michael

Again, that is the wrong kind of subjunctive conditional. You verify "if X were to happen then Y would happen" by making X happen (e.g., conducting an experiment) and observing that Y does, in fact, happen. And you keep on doing this indefinitely, since the scope of the subjunctive conditional is not limited to any collection of actual events; it is a real general that governs an inexhaustible continuum of possible events. You never really verify it, at least not in the strict sense; rather, you corroborate it - i.e., you never falsify it.

Sure, how would you distinguish between the accidental and the necessary when dealing with particular conditionals? Especially when the Peircean view - now backed by quantum theory - sees the world as irreducibly spontaneous (because never completely constrained by its own habits).

So you have to take the probabilistic big picture view - as in, Popperian falsification. Pragmatism only claims to minimise our uncertainty about some proposition. In that sense, absolute verification is a naive realist's pipedream.

[altheist beat me to it. :) ]

*

This is a bit tricky because the truth of this sentence seems to entail the position Micheal Ayers labeled actualism (in his brilliant The Refutation of Determinism: An Essay in Philosophical Logic, London: Methuen (1968)). That is the position seemingly endorsed (at least tacitly) by many Humeans that whatever is possible is actual, and whatever isn't actual is impossible. This is also the view that there are no unactualized powers. That's because the subjunctive conditional statement that you propose would entail that the failure for Pierce to exercise his power would count as (conclusive) evidence that he lacks the power.

hmm, I wasn't trying to suggest an actualist view. I think my intent may have been unclear because the example we were playing with (pierce, rock, gravity) doesn't lend itself gracefully as an example.

Say we're talking about someone else, alex, who has the power to benchpress 400 pounds. We could say: if alex lacked the power to benchpress 400 pounds, then if he attempted to benchpress 400 pounds, the bar would raise 3 inches (whereas a full benchpress would raise it mich higher)

This seems (1) to be true & (2) true in a way that cannot ultimately be explained by the fact that an existing being possesses (either latent or actualized) powers.

It seems like the difference between this sort of counterfactual and the orginal pierce example is that in this case, it is not a matter of counterfactual events, but of counterfactual possesions of powers (What if alex didn't have that power? what if eric did? etc. )

It may be that I'm just not familiar enough with the subject and counterfactuals are always of the possible future event (sea battle, say) type?

Also: part of the above is that it kind of uses particular individuals to illustrate general laws (i.e. if any individual a with power b does c, then d. If any individual a without power b does c, then e.) The reason the sentence in my example is true has absolutely nothing to do with alex, or any particular dumbbell.

BUT: even though it's kind of operating on a general, law-type, level, the sentence, involving a particular individual, nevertheless IS true. That is, it's a true, counterfactual, statement.