Piero Sraffa and Counterfactuals: A View from Sraffa's Unpublished Papers in the Late 1920s

Abstract This article reconstructs Sraffa's position with regard to counterfactual reasoning in the second half of the 1920s as documented by his up until now unpublished papers. While Sraffa did not use the term “counterfactual,” it is precisely this concept he had in mind when examining certain non-purely-observational propositions and discussing responses to “what if?” questions. He did so with respect to different contexts, but his attention focused primarily on the marginal theory of value and distribution. At an early time he showed with regard to the latter that any simple analysis of single causation in terms of counterfactuals is difficult to sustain. Sraffa's method of inquiry can be interpreted as an instance of abductive reasoning. The article confirms Sen's interpretation that Sraffa met counterfactual reasoning with suspicion, since it might easily lead to highly misleading propositions. But Sraffa's manuscripts do not support the extreme view (not entertained by Sen) that any counterfactual reasoning ought to be rejected.