Contrary to Fact: Cause, Chance, Natural Law, and their relation to Counterfactuals.

反事实是一种条件句，在这种条件句中，我们可以推断出如果现实是不同的，事情本来会、可能会或可能会是什么样子。如果袋鼠没有尾巴，它们就会摔倒。如果昨天情况不一样，今天也会不一样。如果把糖放在水里，它就会溶解。这样的思想实验与我们的因果关系、自然必然性、倾向、机会和时间方向的概念有关。如果袋鼠有尾巴，它们就会摔倒，这一事实似乎意味着它们有尾巴是它们保持直立的部分原因，不摔倒和有尾巴都是一个非偶然的事实。事实是，如果事情昨天是不同的，如果事情今天是不同的，这似乎意味着过去对现在有影响，而不是相反。如果把糖放在水里，糖就会溶解，这表明糖有溶解于水的倾向。反事实的谜题是双重事实它们是对与事实相反的东西的判断，非现实，但同时，与我们对现实的最深层模态和时间承诺密切相关。为了解开这个谜团，我们需要知道是什么引导我们形成反事实的判断，又是什么使它们成为事实。目前关于如何回答这些问题的主流观点与大卫·刘易斯有关。刘易斯的反事实概念是70年代流行起来的可能世界语义学的产物。对于Lewis来说，一个基本的反事实是这样分析的：如果P是这样的情况，那么在最近的可能世界里，如果P是真的，那么Q就是真的。在这里，世界的接近是由事实和自然法则的相似性所决定的。自然法则先于反事实。规律本身不涉及因果关系或现实世界的内在模态特征。用这种方式配置反事实的语义，理论家们已经将它们部署为分析工具。然后根据反事实依赖性和倾向来分析因果关系。我批评了这一组观点，然后：(a)我提出了反事实的另一种观点/一种建设性的推理方法/在这种方法中，事实大小的事物（事件）之间的关系决定了反事实判断的结果，而不是它们之间的世界和相似性关系。(b)我概述了这种观点对我们如何理解因果关系和自然必然性的影响，发展因果关系的机会观，以及对法律的表现主义处理，既不是休谟的，也不是必然主义的。(c)我提出了一种利用表现主义和干涉主义（因果论）理论的偶然性理论，它允许在非休谟和休谟的真理制造者之间为偶然性陈述提供一条中间道路。但这里有一个转折。反事实再次出现在对机会的解释中。因此，反事实既在分析链的顶端，也在底部。然而，我展示了如何没有循环，因为分析的概念在真条件约简和表达约简之间是不同的。

Counterfactuals are conditionals in which we trace out how things would, might or could have been if reality had been different. If kangaroos had no tails, they would topple over. If things had been different yesterday, they would have been different today. If this sugar had been put in water, it would have dissolved. Such thought experiments are linked to our concepts of causality, natural necessity, disposition, chance, and the direction of time. The fact that kangaroos would have toppled over if they had tails seems to imply that their having tails is part of what causes them to stay upright, that the both not toppling over and having tails is a non-accidental facts. The fact that things would have been different today, if they had been different yesterday if things had been different today, seems to imply that the past has the present as its effect, and not vice versa. That the sugar would have dissolved if it had been place in water indicates that the sugar has a disposition to dissolve in water. The enigma of counterfactuals is the dual fact that they are judgements about what is contrary to fact, the non-actual, but are, at the same time, intimately linked to our deepest modal and temporal commitments about the actual. To crack the enigma we need to know what guides our formation of counterfactual judgements, and what makes them true. The currently dominant view about how to answer these questions is that associated with David Lewis. Lewis's conception of counterfactuals is a child of the possible-worlds semantics that came to prominence in the 70s. For Lewis, a basic would-counterfactual is analysed in these terms: If P had been the case Q would have been is true iff in the nearest possible worlds in which P is true, Q is true. Here nearness in worlds is fixed by similarity of fact and natural law. Natural law is anterior to counterfactuals. Laws in themselves make no reference to causation or intrinsic modal features of the actual world. With the semantics of counterfactuals configured in this way, theorists have deployed them as analytical tools. Causation is then analysed in terms of counterfactual dependency, and dispositions. I criticize this cluster of views and then: (a) I propose an alternative view of counterfactuals/a constructive, inferential approach/in which relations between fact-sized things (events) determine the outcomes of counterfactual judgements, rather than worlds and similarity relations between them. (b) I outline the implications of this view for how we understand causation and natural necessity, developing a chance view of causation, and an expressivist treatment of law that is neither Humean nor Necessitarian. (c) I offer a theory of chance that draws on expressivism and interventionist theories (of cause), which allows for a middle path between non-Humean and Humean truthmakers for chance statements. But there is a twist. Counterfactuals re-appear again in the explication of chance. Thus counterfactuals are both at the top of the analytic chain and at the bottom. However, I show how there is no circularity since the concepts of analysis in play differ between truth-conditional reduction and expressive reduction.