The Analysis of Counterfactual Conditionals by Gabriel NuchelmansReview by: John WatlingThe Journal of Symbolic Logic, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Sep., 1957), pp. 323-324Published by: Association for Symbolic LogicStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2963646 .

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REVIEWS 323

occurred, or will occur, have caused deforestation and the assertion of the law that de- forestation causes soil erosion. But it is not clear whether or not this is what Ushenko intends. If it is, then it is awkward to mark the distinction by calling the general statements about actual occurrences 'causal laws.'

However his main purpose is to assert what Hume denied, that it is possible to have an experience of causal connection. He believes that we have such an experience whenever our bodies are pushed, and whenever we form an intention and carry it out. What we experience in these conditions is, he says, a tendency in a certain direction, which he identifies with a disposition. Now the fact that many tendencies are tenden- cies towards dispositions should not lead to the confusion of the two. The mind tends to repress the unpleasant; which means that the mind tends towards a disposition to repress the unpleasant. Dispositions are very intimately connected with causes, if a disposition exists a causal connection must; but although it may be that all ten- dencies have a causal explanation, nevertheless the assertion that a tendency exists is not the assertion that a causal connection exists. Ushenko's contention that we have experience of causal connection is made more plausible by this identification of dis- positions with tendencies, for we do have experiences of tendencies. Of course, the fact that this way of making his thesis plausible is mistaken does not prove that Ushenko's thesis is itself mistaken, and it is certainly true that we do have some sort of direct knowledge of our own dispositions: for example a person often knows di- rectly that he is disposed to react in a friendly way towards some other person. How- ever the fact that we may have non-inferential knowledge of our dispositions does not prove that to speak of dispositions is to speak of some sort of sensation or feeling.

In order, so he says, to justify generalization from experience of causal connection, Ushenko attempts to prove that it is logically necessary that every event has a cause. He argues like this: To claim that an event was uncaused is to claim that it might not have happened. To claim that it might not have happened is to claim that, had its antecedents been different, it would not have happened. But this is not to claim that it was uncaused, rather that a cause different from its cause would have produced a different effect. Therefore the claim that an event is uncaused is not a claim that it was uncaused. This argument is ingenious but I do not think it is correct. The question whether an event might not have occurred is not relevant to the question whether it was caused: for example, if a strict sense can be given to saying that an event is inevitable, then such an inevitable event would be an uncaused event, for whatever its antecedents it would have occurred, and nothing could have prevented it. However it may be that the question whether an event might not have occurred, when inter- preted as Ushenko interprets it, is relevant to whether that event was uncaused. But in fact it is not; one cannot show that striking a match did not cause it to light by pointing out that if the match had not been struck then it would not have lit. (Nor can one show it by what seems more relevant, that if the match had not been struck, yet it would have lit.) Ushenko's argument, though incorrect, raises interesting questions. JOHN WATLING

GABRIEL NUCHELMANS. The analysis of counter/actual conditionals. Synthese, vol. 9 issue I no. 1 (1953), pp. 48-63.

Mr. Nuchelmans discusses what is required in giving an analysis. He considers that an analysis of a type of statement should provide a clarification of statements of that type and should show what part they play in ordinary discourse. He clarifies counter- factual conditionals by arguing that, although someone who states such a conditional does in some sense imply that its antecedent is false, he does not state that the ante- cedent is false. Nuchelmans argues this by analogy with Strawson's argument that someone who uses a description does not state that something exists fulfilling the

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324 REVIEWS

description. If the falsity of the antecedent were entailed by a counterfactual about the past, then neither of the statements 'If Seneca had written the tragedies, then he would have written in metrical verse' and 'If Seneca had written the tragedies, then he would not have written in metrical verse' would be true: but surely one of these is true.

He discusses the part that counterfactual conditionals play in ordinary language by pointing out that they are central for the distinction between general statements of law and general statements of fact; and that they play an important part in the meaning of singular causal statements. If someone argues that one historical event took place because of another, then one might refute him by arguing that, on the other hand, if the first had not taken place, still the second would have. This does not refute him, since it might be that if the first had not occurred, its place would have been taken by another cause of the second. JOHN WATLING

ROBERT L. STANLEY. A theory of subjunctive conditionals. Philosophy and phenomenological research, vol. 17 (1956), pp. 22-35.

Previous writers on subjunctive conditionals have frequently had as their goal the discovery of a uniform translation of subjunctive conditionals (subjunctive in virtue of natural language verb-forms) into an extensional formalism, involving only truth-functions and quantification. This attack is bedevilled by a number of well-known difficulties, especially (a) the trivial truth of certain truth-functional and universally quantified conditionals, e g., of p D q when -p and of (x) (Px D Qx) when (x)-Px; and (b) the difficulty of distinguishing "accidental" from "non-acci- dental" universal conditionals. (See Schneider XIX 68 for a summary of recent discussion.)

Stanley's novel approach presents a method for deciding (independently of natural language verb-forms) whether a given conditional has subjunctive sense. His quasi- formal method is not effective, but it is constructive: a proof that a candidate has subjunctive sense can be effectively recognized as such (given agreement that certain expressions are atomic "declarative clauses" in the "everyday grammatical sense"). When the premises of the proof (construction of which is motivated by, loosely speaking, search for appropriate initial conditions and general laws) are true and non-trivial, the conditional is subjunctively true.

Formally, the idea is roughly as follows (terminology adapted from Stanley's): a particular or universal conditional is subjunctively true if it is deducible from true atomic declarative clauses and true non-trivial generalizations with the help of universal instantiation and a rule of "truth-subtraction," which comes in the applications discussed to inferring ip D q from p and (p.tp) D q, where p and q are declarative clauses and ip is a non-void conjunction of declarative clauses. Generali- zations of the form (xl) . . . (xn) (po'.V' :) q') (where p', V', and q' are like p, t, and q, except that certain naming terms are replaced by variables) are trivial if (i) the ante- cedent is "wholly counterfactual": all substitutions of terms for variables make p'. V' false; (ii) the consequent is "wholly profactual": all substitutions of terms for variables make q' true; or (iii) the antecedent is not "completely relevant": one of the conjuncts in p'.yp' may be deleted, yielding a .; such that (xl)... (xn)(O D q') is true. Otherwise they are non-trivial.

The author discusses applications of his method to a number of familiar problematic examples, of which the following (showing that 'If I had been Bach, I would have written the Coffee Cantata,' as accented, is subjunctively true) is typical. (1) is a non- trivial generalization, (3) is a declarative clause, and (2) and (4) follow by rules mentioned above.

(1) (x)(y)(I am x . x wrote y I wrote y).

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