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Counterfactuals of Ontological Dependence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

SAM BARON Open the ORCID record for SAM BARON [Opens in a new window]
SAM BARON*
Affiliation:
DIANOIA INSTITUTE OF PHILOSOPHY, AUSTRALIAN CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY [email protected]
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Abstract

A great deal has been written about ‘would’ counterfactuals of causal dependence. Comparatively little has been said regarding ‘would’ counterfactuals of ontological dependence. The standard Lewis-Stalnaker semantics is inadequate for handling such counterfactuals. That is because some of these counterfactuals are counterpossibles, and the standard Lewis-Stalnaker semantics trivializes for counterpossibles. Fortunately, there is a straightforward extension of the Lewis-Stalnaker semantics available that handles counterpossibles: simply take Lewis's closeness relation that orders possible worlds and unleash it across impossible worlds. To apply the extended semantics, an account of the closeness relation for counterpossibles is needed. In this article, I offer a strategy for evaluating ‘would’ counterfactuals of ontological dependence that understands closeness between worlds in terms of the metaphysical concept of grounding.

Keywords

counterfactualsontological dependencegroundingmetaphysical lawscounterpossibles
Type
Article
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , Summer 2022 , pp. 278 - 299
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Philosophical Association

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Footnotes

I thank Ray Briggs, Jonathan Schaffer, and Alastair Wilson for comments on earlier drafts of this article. I also thank the attendees at a Rutgers postgraduate metaphysics reading group where a very early version of this article was presented. Finally, I thank two referees of this journal for their extremely helpful feedback. Work on this article was funded in part by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DE180100414).

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