PHIL-200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Inductive Reasoning
Document Summary
Thus we rephrase: if in most possible worlds, if p is q then q is true holds as a. But this is a counterfactual when we know p is false. Truth conditions: conditions which make a statement true or false. A counter factual is true if in the nearby possible worlds where p is true, q is true too. If p were the case then q would be the case noncounterfactuals, can be checked within our own world. (ie the chemical composition of gold makes it shiny can be fact checked in this world). But counterfactuals cannot be checked in this world, since they are not true in this world. But even the context of possible worlds is context sensitive to this world (ie depending on what we are discussing, there may be many or few possible worlds to consider). A discussion of causality; like possibility and necessity, it is crucial to some philosophical positions.