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

反事实是条件句，在这些条件句中，如果现实不同，事情会是什么样子，可能是什么样子，或者可能是什么样子。如果袋鼠没有尾巴，它们就会倒下。如果昨天的情况不同，今天的情况就会不同。如果把这种糖放进水里，它就会溶解了。这样的思维实验与我们的因果关系、自然必然性、性情、偶然性和时间方向等概念有关。袋鼠如果有尾巴就会倾倒的事实似乎表明，它们有尾巴是它们保持直立的原因之一，两者都没有倾倒而有尾巴是非偶然的事实。如果昨天的情况是不同的，如果今天的情况不同，那么今天的情况就会不同，这似乎暗示着过去是现在的影响，而不是相反。糖如果放在水里就会溶解，这说明糖有溶于水的倾向。反事实的谜团是一个双重事实，即它们是对什么是与事实相反的、非实际的判断，但同时又与我们关于实际的最深层次的模式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判断，以及是什么使它们成为真的。关于如何回答这些问题，目前占主导地位的观点与大卫·刘易斯有关。刘易斯的反事实概念是70年代兴起的可能世界语义学的产物。对于刘易斯来说，一个基本的反事实是这样分析的：如果P是这样的话，Q就是这样的情况当在P为真的最近的可能世界中是真的，Q也是真的。在这里，世界的接近是由事实和自然规律的相似性所固定的。自然法先于反事实。法律本身并没有提到现实世界的因果关系或固有的模式特征。随着反事实的语义以这种方式配置，理论家们已经将它们部署为分析工具。然后从反事实依赖和处置的角度分析因果关系。我批评了这一系列观点，然后：(A)我提出了一种关于反事实的另一种观点/一种建设性的推论方法/其中事实大小的事情(事件)之间的关系决定了反事实判断的结果，而不是世界和它们之间的相似关系。(B)我概述了这一观点对我们如何理解因果关系和自然必然性的影响，发展了因果关系的偶然性观点，以及对法律的表现主义处理既不是休谟的，也不是必然性的。(C)我提出了一种偶然性理论，它借鉴了表现主义和干预主义(原因)理论，允许在非休谟和休谟的真理者之间为偶然性陈述提供一条中间道路。但这其中有一个转折。反事实在《偶然性的解释》中再次出现。因此，反事实既在分析链的顶端，也在分析链的底部。然而，我展示了没有循环，因为游戏中的分析概念在真值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.