A synthesis view of counterfactuals

Abstract There are two prominent views of counterfactuals in the literature—variably strict conditional accounts developed by Stalnaker 1968 and D. K. Lewis 1973, and strict conditional accounts defended by von Fintel 2001, Gillies 2007, and others. Unfortunately, both views face serious challenges. This paper argues that traditional strict conditional views fail to accommodate our judgments about probabilistic variants of Heim sequences, where these judgments cannot be explained away as beliefs about counterfactual probabilities. Similar problems arise for other theories of counterfactuals, including views defended by Križ 2015, Klecha 2015, and K. Lewis 2018. After presenting challenges for traditional views, I introduce an alternative semantics and pragmatics for counterfactuals. The synthesis view that I defend incorporates a key insight of variably strict accounts—namely, that the antecedent of a counterfactual often influences what worlds are relevant to its truth conditions at a context. However, unlike variably strict accounts, my view preserves a strict conditional semantics according to which Antecedent Strengthening is valid, thereby capturing data that have motivated strict conditional theorists. By adopting the right account of the pragmatics of counterfactuals, we can endorse a strict conditional semantics and still account for a wide range of intuitive judgments, including probabilistic judgments about counterfactuals.