Counterfactual conditionals (also ''subjunctive'' or ''X-marked'') are
conditional sentence
Conditional sentences are natural language sentences that express that one thing is contingent on something else, e.g. "If it rains, the picnic will be cancelled." They are so called because the impact of the main clause of the sentence is ''cond ...
s which discuss what would have been true under different circumstances, e.g. "If Peter believed in ghosts, he would be afraid to be here." Counterfactuals are contrasted with
indicatives, which are generally restricted to discussing open possibilities. Counterfactuals are characterized grammatically by their use of
fake tense morphology, which some languages use in combination with other kinds of
morphology
Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to:
Disciplines
* Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts
* Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies ...
including
aspect
Aspect or Aspects may refer to:
Entertainment
* ''Aspect magazine'', a biannual DVD magazine showcasing new media art
* Aspect Co., a Japanese video game company
* Aspects (band), a hip hop group from Bristol, England
* ''Aspects'' (Benny Carter ...
and
mood.
Counterfactuals are one of the most studied phenomena in
philosophical logic
Understood in a narrow sense, philosophical logic is the area of logic that studies the application of logical methods to philosophical problems, often in the form of extended logical systems like modal logic. Some theorists conceive philosophical ...
,
formal semantics, and
philosophy of language
In analytic philosophy, philosophy of language investigates the nature of language and the relations between language, language users, and the world. Investigations may include inquiry into the nature of meaning, intentionality, reference, ...
. They were first discussed as a problem for the
material conditional
The material conditional (also known as material implication) is an operation commonly used in logic. When the conditional symbol \rightarrow is interpreted as material implication, a formula P \rightarrow Q is true unless P is true and Q is ...
analysis of conditionals, which treats them all as trivially true. Starting in the 1960s, philosophers and linguists developed the now-classic
possible world
A possible world is a complete and consistent way the world is or could have been. Possible worlds are widely used as a formal device in logic, philosophy, and linguistics in order to provide a semantics for intensional logic, intensional and mod ...
approach, in which a counterfactual's truth hinges on its consequent holding at certain possible worlds where its antecedent holds. More recent formal analyses have treated them using tools such as
causal model
In the philosophy of science, a causal model (or structural causal model) is a conceptual model that describes the causal mechanisms of a system. Causal models can improve study designs by providing clear rules for deciding which independent va ...
s and
dynamic semantics Dynamic semantics is a framework in logic and natural language semantics that treats the meaning of a sentence as its potential to update a context. In static semantics, knowing the meaning of a sentence amounts to knowing when it is true; in dynami ...
. Other research has addressed their metaphysical, psychological, and grammatical underpinnings, while applying some of the resultant insights to fields including history, marketing, and epidemiology.
Overview
Examples
The difference between
indicative
A realis mood (abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood which is used principally to indicate that something is a statement of fact; in other words, to express what the speaker considers to be a known state of affairs, as in declarative sentences. Most ...
and counterfactual conditionals can be illustrated by the following
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
minimal pair
In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, spoken or signed, that differ in only one phonological element, such as a phoneme, toneme or chroneme, and have distinct meanings. They are used to demonstrate th ...
:
* Indicative conditional: If Sally ''owns'' a donkey, then she ''beats'' it.
* Simple past counterfactual: If Sally ''owned'' a donkey, she ''would beat'' it.
These conditionals differ in both form and meaning. The indicative conditional uses the present tense forms "owns" and "beats" and therefore conveys that the speaker is agnostic about whether Sally in fact owns a donkey. The counterfactual example uses the
fake tense
Counterfactual conditionals (also ''subjunctive'' or ''X-marked'') are conditional sentences which discuss what would have been true under different circumstances, e.g. "If Peter believed in ghosts, he would be afraid to be here." Counterfactual ...
form "owned" in the "if" clause and the past-inflected
modal "would" in the "then" clause. As a result, it conveys that Sally does not in fact own a donkey. English has several other grammatical forms whose meanings are sometimes included under the umbrella of counterfactuality. One is the
past perfect
The pluperfect (shortening of plusquamperfect), usually called past perfect in English, is a type of verb form, generally treated as a grammatical tense in certain languages, relating to an action that occurred prior to an aforementioned time i ...
counterfactual, which contrasts with indicatives and simple past counterfactuals in its use of pluperfect morphology:
* Past perfect counterfactual: If it ''had been raining'' yesterday, then Sally ''would have been'' inside.
Another kind of conditional uses the form "were", generally referred to as the ''
irrealis
In linguistics, irrealis moods (abbreviated ) are the main set of grammatical moods that indicate that a certain situation or action is not known to have happened at the moment the speaker is talking. This contrasts with the realis moods.
Every ...
'' or subjunctive form.
* ''Irrealis'' counterfactual: If it ''were raining'' right now, then Sally ''would be'' inside.
Past perfect and irrealis counterfactuals can undergo ''conditional inversion'':
* Had it rained, Sally would have been inside.
* Were it raining, Sally would be inside.
Terminology
The term ''counterfactual conditional'' is widely used as an umbrella term for the kinds of sentences shown above. However, not all conditionals of this sort express contrary-to-fact meanings. For instance, the classic example known as the "Anderson Case" has the characteristic grammatical form of a counterfactual conditional, but does not convey that its antecedent is false or unlikely.
# Anderson Case: If Jones had taken arsenic, he would have shown just exactly those symptoms which he does in fact show.
Such conditionals are also widely referred to as ''subjunctive conditionals'', though this term is likewise acknowledged as a misnomer even by those who use it. Many languages do not have a morphological
subjunctive
The subjunctive (also known as conjunctive in some languages) is a grammatical mood, a feature of the utterance that indicates the speaker's attitude towards it. Subjunctive forms of verbs are typically used to express various states of unreality ...
(e.g.
Danish
Danish may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark
People
* A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark
* Culture of Denmark
* Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...
and
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
) and many that do have it don’t use it for this sort of conditional (e.g.
French,
Swahili, all
Indo-Aryan languages
The Indo-Aryan languages (or sometimes Indic languages) are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. As of the early 21st century, they have more than 800 million speakers, primarily ...
that have a subjunctive). Moreover, languages that do use the subjunctive for such conditionals only do so if they have a specific past subjunctive form. Thus, subjunctive marking is neither necessary nor sufficient for membership in this class of conditionals.
The terms ''counterfactual'' and ''subjunctive'' have sometimes been repurposed for more specific uses. For instance, the term "counterfactual" is sometimes applied to conditionals that express a contrary-to-fact meaning, regardless of their grammatical structure.
Along similar lines, the term "subjunctive" is sometimes used to refer to conditionals that bear fake past or irrealis marking, regardless of the meaning they convey.
Recently the term ''X-Marked'' has been proposed as a replacement, evoking the ''ex''tra marking that these conditionals bear. Those adopting this terminology refer to indicative conditionals as ''O-Marked'' conditionals, reflecting their ''o''rdinary marking.
The ''antecedent'' of a conditional is sometimes referred to as its ''"if"-clause'' or ''protasis''. The ''consequent'' of a conditional is sometimes referred to as a ''"then"''-clause or as an apodosis.
Logic and semantics
Counterfactuals were first discussed by
Nelson Goodman
Henry Nelson Goodman (7 August 1906 – 25 November 1998) was an American philosopher, known for his work on counterfactuals, mereology, the problem of induction, irrealism, and aesthetics.
Life and career
Goodman was born in Somerville, Mas ...
as a problem for the
material conditional
The material conditional (also known as material implication) is an operation commonly used in logic. When the conditional symbol \rightarrow is interpreted as material implication, a formula P \rightarrow Q is true unless P is true and Q is ...
used in
classical logic
Classical logic (or standard logic or Frege-Russell logic) is the intensively studied and most widely used class of deductive logic. Classical logic has had much influence on analytic philosophy.
Characteristics
Each logical system in this class ...
. Because of these problems, early work such as that of
W.V. Quine held that counterfactuals aren't strictly logical, and do not make true or false claims about the world. However, in the 1960s and 1970s, work by
Robert Stalnaker
Robert Culp Stalnaker (born 1940) is an American philosopher who is Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Correspond ...
and
David Lewis showed that these problems are surmountable given an appropriate
intension
In any of several fields of study that treat the use of signs — for example, in linguistics, logic, mathematics, semantics, semiotics, and philosophy of language — an intension is any property or quality connoted by a word, phrase, or anoth ...
al logical framework. Work since then in
formal semantics,
philosophical logic
Understood in a narrow sense, philosophical logic is the area of logic that studies the application of logical methods to philosophical problems, often in the form of extended logical systems like modal logic. Some theorists conceive philosophical ...
,
philosophy of language
In analytic philosophy, philosophy of language investigates the nature of language and the relations between language, language users, and the world. Investigations may include inquiry into the nature of meaning, intentionality, reference, ...
, and
cognitive science has built on this insight, taking it in a variety of different directions.
Classic puzzles
The problem of counterfactuals
According to the
material conditional
The material conditional (also known as material implication) is an operation commonly used in logic. When the conditional symbol \rightarrow is interpreted as material implication, a formula P \rightarrow Q is true unless P is true and Q is ...
analysis, a natural language conditional, a statement of the form ‘if P then Q’, is true whenever its antecedent, P, is false. Since counterfactual conditionals are those whose antecedents are false, this analysis would wrongly predict that all counterfactuals are vacuously true. Goodman illustrates this point using the following pair in a context where it is understood that the piece of butter under discussion had not been heated.
[Goodman, N.,]
The Problem of Counterfactual Conditionals
, ''The Journal of Philosophy'', Vol. 44, No. 5, (27 February 1947), pp. 113–28.
# If that piece of butter had been heated to 150º, it would have melted.
# If that piece of butter had been heated to 150º, it would not have melted.
More generally, such examples show that counterfactuals are not truth-functional. In other words, knowing whether the antecedent and consequent are actually true is not sufficient to determine whether the counterfactual itself is true.
Context dependence and vagueness
Counterfactuals are ''context dependent'' and ''
vague
In linguistics and philosophy, a vague predicate is one which gives rise to borderline cases. For example, the English adjective "tall" is vague since it is not clearly true or false for someone of middling height. By contrast, the word "prime" is ...
''. For example, either of the following statements can be reasonably held true, though not at the same time:
# If
Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar (; ; 12 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC), was a Roman people, Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in Caes ...
had been in command in Korea, he would have
used the atom bomb.
# If Caesar had been in command in Korea, he would have used catapults.
Non-monotonicity
Counterfactuals are ''non-monotonic'' in the sense that their truth values can be changed by adding extra material to their antecedents. This fact is illustrated by ''
Sobel sequences'' such as the following:
# If Hannah had drunk coffee, she would be happy.
# If Hannah had drunk coffee and the coffee had gasoline in it, she would be sad.
# If Hannah had drunk coffee and the coffee had gasoline in it and Hannah was a gasoline-drinking robot, she would be happy.
One way of formalizing this fact is to say that the principle of ''Antecedent Strengthening'' should not hold for any connective > intended as a formalization of natural language conditionals.
* Antecedent Strengthening:
Possible worlds accounts
The most common logical accounts of counterfactuals are couched in the
possible world semantics
A possible world is a complete and consistent way the world is or could have been. Possible worlds are widely used as a formal device in logic, philosophy, and linguistics in order to provide a semantics for intensional and modal logic. Their me ...
. Broadly speaking, these approaches have in common that they treat a counterfactual ''A'' > ''B'' as true if ''B'' holds across some set of possible worlds where A is true. They vary mainly in how they identify the set of relevant A-worlds.
David Lewis's ''variably strict conditional'' is considered the classic analysis within philosophy. The closely related ''premise semantics'' proposed by
Angelika Kratzer is often taken as the standard within linguistics. However, there are numerous possible worlds approaches on the market, including
dynamic
Dynamics (from Greek δυναμικός ''dynamikos'' "powerful", from δύναμις ''dynamis'' "power") or dynamic may refer to:
Physics and engineering
* Dynamics (mechanics)
** Aerodynamics, the study of the motion of air
** Analytical dynam ...
variants of the ''strict conditional'' analysis originally dismissed by Lewis.
Strict conditional
The
strict conditional In logic, a strict conditional (symbol: \Box, or ⥽) is a conditional governed by a modal operator, that is, a logical connective of modal logic. It is logically equivalent to the material conditional of classical logic, combined with the necessity ...
analysis treats natural language counterfactuals as being equivalent to the
modal logic
Modal logic is a collection of formal systems developed to represent statements about necessity and possibility. It plays a major role in philosophy of language, epistemology, metaphysics, and natural language semantics. Modal logics extend other ...
formula
. In this formula,
expresses necessity and
is understood as
material implication. This approach was first proposed in 1912 by
C.I. Lewis as part of his
axiomatic approach to modal logic.
In modern
relational semantics, this means that the strict conditional is true at ''w'' iff the corresponding material conditional is true throughout the worlds accessible from ''w''. More formally:
* Given a model
, we have that
iff
for all
such that
Unlike the material conditional, the strict conditional is not vacuously true when its antecedent is false. To see why, observe that both
and
will be false at
if there is some accessible world
where
is true and
is not. The strict conditional is also context-dependent, at least when given a relational semantics (or something similar). In the relational framework, accessibility relations are parameters of evaluation which encode the range of possibilities which are treated as "live" in the context. Since the truth of a strict conditional can depend on the accessibility relation used to evaluate it, this feature of the strict conditional can be used to capture context-dependence.
The strict conditional analysis encounters many known problems, notably monotonicity. In the classical relational framework, when using a standard notion of entailment, the strict conditional is monotonic, i.e. it validates ''Antecedent Strengthening''. To see why, observe that if
holds at every world accessible from
, the monotonicity of the material conditional guarantees that
will be too. Thus, we will have that
.
This fact led to widespread abandonment of the strict conditional, in particular in favor of Lewis's
variably strict analysis. However, subsequent work has revived the strict conditional analysis by appealing to context sensitivity. This approach was pioneered by Warmbrōd (1981), who argued that ''Sobel sequences'' don't demand a ''non-monotonic'' logic, but in fact can rather be explained by speakers switching to more permissive accessibility relations as the sequence proceeds. In his system, a counterfactual like "If Hannah had drunk coffee, she would be happy" would normally be evaluated using a model where Hannah's coffee is gasoline-free in all accessible worlds. If this same model were used to evaluate a subsequent utterance of "If Hannah had drunk coffee and the coffee had gasoline in it...", this second conditional would come out as trivially true, since there are no accessible worlds where its antecedent holds. Warmbrōd's idea was that speakers will switch to a model with a more permissive accessibility relation in order to avoid this triviality.
Subsequent work by Kai von Fintel (2001), Thony Gillies (2007), and Malte Willer (2019) has formalized this idea in the framework of
dynamic semantics Dynamic semantics is a framework in logic and natural language semantics that treats the meaning of a sentence as its potential to update a context. In static semantics, knowing the meaning of a sentence amounts to knowing when it is true; in dynami ...
, and given a number of linguistic arguments in favor. One argument is that conditional antecedents license
negative polarity items, which are thought to be licensed only by monotonic operators.
# If Hannah had drunk any coffee, she would be happy.
Another argument in favor of the strict conditional comes from
Irene Heim's observation that Sobel Sequences are generally
infelicitous (i.e. sound strange) in reverse.
# If Hannah had drunk coffee with gasoline in it, she would not be happy. But if she had drunk coffee, she would be happy.
Sarah Moss (2012) and Karen Lewis (2018) have responded to these arguments, showing that a version of the variably strict analysis can account for these patterns, and arguing that such an account is preferable since it can also account for apparent exceptions. As of 2020, this debate continues in the literature, with accounts such as Willer (2019) arguing that a strict conditional account can cover these exceptions as well.
Variably strict conditional
In the variably strict approach, the semantics of a conditional ''A'' > ''B'' is given by some function on the relative closeness of worlds where A is true and B is true, on the one hand, and worlds where A is true but B is not, on the other.
On Lewis's account, A > C is (a) vacuously true if and only if there are no worlds where A is true (for example, if A is logically or metaphysically impossible); (b) non-vacuously true if and only if, among the worlds where A is true, some worlds where C is true are closer to the actual world than any world where C is not true; or (c) false otherwise. Although in Lewis's ''Counterfactuals'' it was unclear what he meant by 'closeness', in later writings, Lewis made it clear that he did ''not'' intend the metric of 'closeness' to be simply our ordinary notion of
overall similarity.
Example:
:If he had eaten more at breakfast, he would not have been hungry at 11 am.
On Lewis's account, the truth of this statement consists in the fact that, among possible worlds where he ate more for breakfast, there is at least one world where he is not hungry at 11 am and which is closer to our world than any world where he ate more for breakfast but is still hungry at 11 am.
Stalnaker's account differs from Lewis's most notably in his acceptance of the ''limit'' and ''uniqueness assumptions''. The uniqueness assumption is the thesis that, for any antecedent A, among the possible worlds where A is true, there is a single (''unique'') one that is ''closest'' to the actual world. The limit assumption is the thesis that, for a given antecedent A, if there is a chain of possible worlds where A is true, each closer to the actual world than its predecessor, then the chain has a ''limit'': a possible world where A is true that is closer to the actual worlds than all worlds in the chain. (The uniqueness assumption
entails the limit assumption, but the limit assumption does not entail the uniqueness assumption.) On Stalnaker's account, A > C is non-vacuously true if and only if, at the closest world where A is true, C is true. So, the above example is true just in case at the single, closest world where he ate more breakfast, he does not feel hungry at 11 am. Although it is controversial, Lewis rejected the limit assumption (and therefore the uniqueness assumption) because it rules out the possibility that there might be worlds that get closer and closer to the actual world without limit. For example, there might be an infinite series of worlds, each with a coffee cup a smaller fraction of an inch to the left of its actual position, but none of which is uniquely the closest. (See Lewis 1973: 20.)
One consequence of Stalnaker's acceptance of the uniqueness assumption is that, if the
law of excluded middle
In logic, the law of excluded middle (or the principle of excluded middle) states that for every proposition, either this proposition or its negation is true. It is one of the so-called three laws of thought, along with the law of noncontradic ...
is true, then all instances of the formula (A > C) ∨ (A > ¬C) are true. The law of excluded middle is the thesis that for all propositions p, p ∨ ¬p is true. If the uniqueness assumption is true, then for every antecedent A, there is a uniquely closest world where A is true. If the law of excluded middle is true, any consequent C is either true or false at that world where A is true. So for every counterfactual A > C, either A > C or A > ¬C is true. This is called conditional excluded middle (CEM). Example:
:(1) If the fair coin had been flipped, it would have landed heads.
:(2) If the fair coin had been flipped, it would have landed tails (i.e. not heads).
On Stalnaker's analysis, there is a closest world where the fair coin mentioned in (1) and (2) is flipped and at that world either it lands heads or it lands tails. So either (1) is true and (2) is false or (1) is false and (2) true. On Lewis's analysis, however, both (1) and (2) are false, for the worlds where the fair coin lands heads are no more or less close than the worlds where they land tails. For Lewis, "If the coin had been flipped, it would have landed heads or tails" is true, but this does not entail that "If the coin had been flipped, it would have landed heads, or: If the coin had been flipped it would have landed tails."
Other accounts
Causal models
The ''causal models framework'' analyzes counterfactuals in terms of systems of
structural equations. In a system of equations, each variable is assigned a value that is an explicit function of other variables in the system. Given such a model, the sentence "''Y'' would be ''y'' had ''X'' been ''x''" (formally, ''X = x'' > ''Y = y'' ) is defined as the assertion: If we replace the equation currently determining ''X'' with a constant ''X = x'', and solve the set of equations for variable ''Y'', the solution obtained will be ''Y = y''. This definition has been shown to be compatible with the axioms of possible world semantics and forms the basis for causal inference in the natural and social sciences, since each structural equation in those domains corresponds to a familiar causal mechanism that can be meaningfully reasoned about by investigators. This approach was developed by
Judea Pearl
Judea Pearl (born September 4, 1936) is an Israeli-American computer scientist and philosopher, best known for championing the probabilistic approach to artificial intelligence and the development of Bayesian networks (see the article on belief ...
(2000) as a means of encoding fine-grained intuitions about causal relations which are difficult to capture in other proposed systems.
Belief revision
In the
belief revision Belief revision is the process of changing beliefs to take into account a new piece of information. The logical formalization of belief revision is researched in philosophy, in databases, and in artificial intelligence for the design of rational age ...
framework, counterfactuals are treated using a formal implementation of the ''Ramsey test''. In these systems, a counterfactual ''A'' > ''B'' holds if and only if the addition of ''A'' to the current body of knowledge has ''B'' as a consequence. This condition relates counterfactual conditionals to
belief revision Belief revision is the process of changing beliefs to take into account a new piece of information. The logical formalization of belief revision is researched in philosophy, in databases, and in artificial intelligence for the design of rational age ...
, as the evaluation of ''A'' > ''B'' can be done by first revising the current knowledge with ''A'' and then checking whether ''B'' is true in what results. Revising is easy when ''A'' is consistent with the current beliefs, but can be hard otherwise. Every semantics for belief revision can be used for evaluating conditional statements. Conversely, every method for evaluating conditionals can be seen as a way for performing revision.
Ginsberg
Ginsberg (1986) has proposed a semantics for conditionals which assumes that the current beliefs form a set of
propositional formula
In propositional logic, a propositional formula is a type of syntactic formula which is well formed and has a truth value. If the values of all variables in a propositional formula are given, it determines a unique truth value. A propositional fo ...
e, considering the maximal sets of these formulae that are consistent with ''A'', and adding ''A'' to each. The rationale is that each of these maximal sets represents a possible state of belief in which ''A'' is true that is as similar as possible to the original one. The conditional statement ''A'' > ''B'' therefore holds if and only if ''B'' is true in all such sets.
[.]
The grammar of counterfactuality
Languages use different strategies for expressing counterfactuality. Some have a dedicated counterfactual
morphemes
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology.
In English, morphemes are often but not necessarily words. Morphemes that stand alone a ...
, while others recruit morphemes which otherwise express
tense,
aspect
Aspect or Aspects may refer to:
Entertainment
* ''Aspect magazine'', a biannual DVD magazine showcasing new media art
* Aspect Co., a Japanese video game company
* Aspects (band), a hip hop group from Bristol, England
* ''Aspects'' (Benny Carter ...
,
mood, or a combination thereof. Since the early 2000s, linguists, philosophers of language, and philosophical logicians have intensely studied the nature of this grammatical marking, and it continues to be an active area of study.
Fake tense
Description
In many languages, counterfactuality is marked by
past tense
The past tense is a grammatical tense whose function is to place an action or situation in the past. Examples of verbs in the past tense include the English verbs ''sang'', ''went'' and ''washed''. Most languages have a past tense, with some hav ...
morphology.
Since these uses of the past tense do not convey their typical temporal meaning, they are called ''fake past'' or ''fake tense''.
[von Fintel, Kai; Iatridou, Sabine (2020)]
Prolegomena to a Theory of X-Marking
''Manuscript''. English is one language which uses fake past to mark counterfactuality, as shown in the following
minimal pair
In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, spoken or signed, that differ in only one phonological element, such as a phoneme, toneme or chroneme, and have distinct meanings. They are used to demonstrate th ...
. In the indicative example, the bolded words are present tense forms. In the counterfactual example, both words take their past tense form. This use of the past tense cannot have its ordinary temporal meaning, since it can be used with the adverb "tomorrow" without creating a contradiction.
[von Fintel, Kai; Iatridou, Sabine (2020)]
Prolegomena to a Theory of X-Marking
''Manuscript''.
# Indicative: If Natalia leaves tomorrow, she will arrive on time.
# Counterfactual: If Natalia left tomorrow, she would arrive on time.
Modern Hebrew
Modern Hebrew ( he, עברית חדשה, ''ʿivrít ḥadašá ', , '' lit.'' "Modern Hebrew" or "New Hebrew"), also known as Israeli Hebrew or Israeli, and generally referred to by speakers simply as Hebrew ( ), is the standard form of the He ...
is another language where counterfactuality is marked with a fake past morpheme:
:: 'If Dani had been home tomorrow, we would’ve visited him.'
Palestinian Arabic
Palestinian Arabic is a dialect continuum of mutually intelligible varieties of Levantine Arabic spoken by most Palestinians in Palestine, Israel and in the Palestinian diaspora. Together with Jordanian Arabic, it has the ISO 639-3 language cod ...
is another:
:: 'If he had been home tomorrow, we would’ve visited him.'
Fake past is extremely prevalent cross-linguistically, either on its own or in combination with other morphemes. Moreover,
theoretical linguists and
philosophers of language
A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
have argued that other languages' strategies for marking counterfactuality are actually
realizations of fake tense along with other morphemes. For this reason, fake tense has often been treated as the locus of the counterfactual meaning itself.
Formal analyses
In
formal semantics and
philosophical logic
Understood in a narrow sense, philosophical logic is the area of logic that studies the application of logical methods to philosophical problems, often in the form of extended logical systems like modal logic. Some theorists conceive philosophical ...
, fake past is regarded as a puzzle, since it is not obvious why so many unrelated languages would repurpose a tense
morpheme
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful Constituent (linguistics), constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistics, linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology (linguistics), morphology.
In English, morphemes are ...
to mark counterfactuality. Proposed solutions to this puzzle divide into two camps: ''past as modal'' and ''past as past''. These approaches differ in whether or not they take the past tense's core meaning to be about time.
In the ''past as modal approach'', the
denotation
In linguistics and philosophy, the denotation of an expression is its literal meaning. For instance, the English word "warm" denotes the property of being warm. Denotation is contrasted with other aspects of meaning including connotation. For inst ...
of the past tense is not fundamentally about time. Rather, it is an
underspecified skeleton which can apply either to
modal or temporal content.
For instance, the particular past as modal proposal of Iatridou (2000), the past tense's core meaning is what's shown schematically below:
# The
topic
Topic, topics, TOPIC, topical, or topicality may refer to:
Topic / Topics
* Topić, a Slavic surname
* ''Topics'' (Aristotle), a work by Aristotle
* Topic (chocolate bar), a brand of confectionery bar
* Topic (DJ), German musician
* Topic (g ...
''x'' is not the contextually-provided ''x''
Depending on how this denotation
composes, ''x'' can be a time interval or a
possible world
A possible world is a complete and consistent way the world is or could have been. Possible worlds are widely used as a formal device in logic, philosophy, and linguistics in order to provide a semantics for intensional logic, intensional and mod ...
. When ''x'' is a time, the past tense will convey that the sentence is talking about non-current times, i.e. the past. When ''x'' is a world, it will convey that the sentence is talking about a potentially non-actual possibility. The latter is what allows for a counterfactual meaning.
The ''past as past approach'' treats the past tense as having an inherently temporal denotation. On this approach, so-called fake tense isn't actually fake. It differs from "real" tense only in how it takes
scope
Scope or scopes may refer to:
People with the surname
* Jamie Scope (born 1986), English footballer
* John T. Scopes (1900–1970), central figure in the Scopes Trial regarding the teaching of evolution
Arts, media, and entertainment
* Cinem ...
, i.e. which component of the sentence's meaning is shifted to an earlier time. When a sentence has "real" past marking, it discusses something that happened at an earlier time; when a sentence has so-called fake past marking, it discusses possibilities that were
accessible
Accessibility is the design of products, devices, services, vehicles, or environments so as to be usable by people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design and practice of accessible development ensures both "direct access" (i. ...
at an earlier time but may no longer be.
Fake aspect
''Fake
aspect
Aspect or Aspects may refer to:
Entertainment
* ''Aspect magazine'', a biannual DVD magazine showcasing new media art
* Aspect Co., a Japanese video game company
* Aspects (band), a hip hop group from Bristol, England
* ''Aspects'' (Benny Carter ...
'' often accompanies fake tense in languages that mark aspect. In some languages (e.g.
Modern Greek
Modern Greek (, , or , ''Kiní Neoellinikí Glóssa''), generally referred to by speakers simply as Greek (, ), refers collectively to the dialects of the Greek language spoken in the modern era, including the official standardized form of the ...
,
Zulu, and the
Romance languages
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language fam ...
) this fake aspect is
imperfective
The imperfective (abbreviated or more ambiguously ) is a grammatical aspect used to describe ongoing, habitual, repeated, or similar semantic roles, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future. Although many languages have a g ...
. In other languages (e.g.
Palestinian Arabic
Palestinian Arabic is a dialect continuum of mutually intelligible varieties of Levantine Arabic spoken by most Palestinians in Palestine, Israel and in the Palestinian diaspora. Together with Jordanian Arabic, it has the ISO 639-3 language cod ...
) it is
perfective
The perfective aspect (abbreviated ), sometimes called the aoristic aspect, is a grammatical aspect that describes an action viewed as a simple whole; i.e., a unit without interior composition. The perfective aspect is distinguished from the imp ...
. However, in other languages including
Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
and
Polish
Polish may refer to:
* Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe
* Polish language
* Poles
Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...
, counterfactuals can have either perfective or imperfective aspect.
Fake imperfective aspect is demonstrated by the two
Modern Greek
Modern Greek (, , or , ''Kiní Neoellinikí Glóssa''), generally referred to by speakers simply as Greek (, ), refers collectively to the dialects of the Greek language spoken in the modern era, including the official standardized form of the ...
sentences below. These examples form a
minimal pair
In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, spoken or signed, that differ in only one phonological element, such as a phoneme, toneme or chroneme, and have distinct meanings. They are used to demonstrate th ...
, since they are identical except that the first uses past imperfective marking where the second uses past perfective marking. As a result of this morphological difference, the first has a counterfactual meaning, while the second does not.
:: 'If he took this syrup, he would get better'
:: 'If he took this syrup, he must be better'
This imperfective marking has been argued to be fake on the grounds that it is compatible with ''completive adverbials'' such as "in one month":
:: 'If you built this house in a month, you would be able to sell it before the summer.'
In ordinary non-conditional sentences, such adverbials are compatible with perfective aspect but not with imperfective aspect:
:: 'She built this house in one month'
:: 'She was building this house in one month'
Psychology
People engage in
counterfactual thinking
Counterfactual thinking is a concept in psychology that involves the human tendency to create possible alternatives to life events that have already occurred; something that is contrary to what actually happened. Counterfactual thinking is, as it ...
frequently. Experimental evidence indicates that people's thoughts about counterfactual conditionals differ in important ways from their thoughts about indicative conditionals.
Comprehension
Participants in experiments were asked to read sentences, including counterfactual conditionals, e.g., ‘If Mark had left home early, he would have caught the train’. Afterwards, they were asked to identify which sentences they had been shown. They often mistakenly believed they had been shown sentences corresponding to the presupposed facts, e.g., ‘Mark did not leave home early’ and ‘Mark did not catch the train’.
In other experiments, participants were asked to read short stories that contained counterfactual conditionals, e.g., ‘If there had been roses in the flower shop then there would have been lilies’. Later in the story, they read sentences corresponding to the presupposed facts, e.g., ‘there were no roses and there were no lilies’. The counterfactual conditional
primed them to read the sentence corresponding to the presupposed facts very rapidly; no such priming effect occurred for indicative conditionals. They spent different amounts of time 'updating' a story that contains a counterfactual conditional compared to one that contains factual information and focused on different parts of counterfactual conditionals.
Reasoning
Experiments have compared the inferences people make from counterfactual conditionals and indicative conditionals. Given a counterfactual conditional, e.g., 'If there had been a circle on the blackboard then there would have been a triangle', and the subsequent information 'in fact there was no triangle', participants make the
modus tollens
In propositional logic, ''modus tollens'' () (MT), also known as ''modus tollendo tollens'' (Latin for "method of removing by taking away") and denying the consequent, is a deductive argument form and a rule of inference. ''Modus tollens' ...
inference 'there was no circle' more often than they do from an indicative conditional. Given the counterfactual conditional and the subsequent information 'in fact there was a circle', participants make the
modus ponens
In propositional logic, ''modus ponens'' (; MP), also known as ''modus ponendo ponens'' (Latin for "method of putting by placing") or implication elimination or affirming the antecedent, is a deductive argument form and rule of inference. ...
inference as often as they do from an indicative conditional.
Psychological accounts
Byrne '
Byrne (also O'Byrne) is an Irish surname. It is derived from the Gaelic ''Ó Broin'' or ''Ó Beirn''.
There are two Irish surnames which have Byrne as their English spelling; the most common comes from Ó Broin, which refers to the Leinster-b ...
argues that people construct
mental representation
A mental representation (or cognitive representation), in philosophy of mind, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science, is a hypothetical internal cognitive symbol that represents external reality, or else a mental process that ma ...
s that encompass two possibilities when they understand, and reason from, a counterfactual conditional, e.g., 'if Oswald had not shot Kennedy, then someone else would have'. They envisage the conjecture 'Oswald did not shoot Kennedy and someone else did' and they also think about the presupposed facts 'Oswald did shoot Kennedy and someone else did not'. According to the
mental model theory of reasoning The mental model theory of reasoning was developed by Philip Johnson-Laird and Ruth M.J. Byrne (Johnson-Laird and Byrne, 1991). It has been applied to the main domains of deductive inference including relational inferences such as spatial and temp ...
, they construct
mental models
A mental model is an explanation of someone's thought process about how something works in the real world. It is a representation of the surrounding world, the relationships between its various parts and a person's intuitive perception about the ...
of the alternative possibilities.
See also
*
Alvin Goldman
Alvin Ira Goldman (born 1938) is an American philosopher who is Emeritus Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Rutgers University in New Jersey and a leading figure in epistemology.
Education and career
Goldman e ...
*
Angelika Kratzer
*
Causality
Causality (also referred to as causation, or cause and effect) is influence by which one event, process, state, or object (''a'' ''cause'') contributes to the production of another event, process, state, or object (an ''effect'') where the cau ...
*
Conditional sentence
Conditional sentences are natural language sentences that express that one thing is contingent on something else, e.g. "If it rains, the picnic will be cancelled." They are so called because the impact of the main clause of the sentence is ''cond ...
*
David Lewis (philosopher)
David Kellogg Lewis (September 28, 1941 – October 14, 2001) was an American philosopher who is widely regarded as one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century. Lewis taught briefly at UCLA and then at Princeton University fr ...
*
Import-Export
*
Indicative conditional
In natural languages, an indicative conditional is a conditional sentence such as "If Leona is at home, she isn't in Paris", whose grammatical form restricts it to discussing what could be true. Indicatives are typically defined in opposition to co ...
*
Sabine Iatridou
Sabine Iatridou is a linguist whose work on syntax and the syntax‐semantics interface has helped to delineate theories of tense and modality.
Academic career
Iatridou was born in Thessaloniki, spent her childhood in the Netherlands, and th ...
*
Modal logic
Modal logic is a collection of formal systems developed to represent statements about necessity and possibility. It plays a major role in philosophy of language, epistemology, metaphysics, and natural language semantics. Modal logics extend other ...
*
Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick (; November 16, 1938 – January 23, 2002) was an American philosopher. He held the Joseph Pellegrino University Professorship at Harvard University,
*
Similarity (philosophy)
In philosophy, similarity or resemblance is a relation between objects that constitutes how much these objects are alike. Similarity comes in degrees: e.g. oranges are more similar to apples than to the moon. It is traditionally seen as an Relation ...
*
Simplification of disjunctive antecedents In formal semantics and philosophical logic, simplification of disjunctive antecedents (SDA) is the phenomenon whereby a disjunction in the antecedent of a conditional appears to distribute over the conditional as a whole. This inference is show ...
Footnotes
References
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{{Authority control
Conditionals in linguistics
Grammar
Semantics
Belief revision
Thought experiments
Linguistic modality
Formal semantics (natural language)