I don't like counterfactuals

I think they are a rhetorical trick to try an ascribe forensic validation to things that didn’t happen.

But the past is “true/false” not “what we feel is resonible”

Anyone got a good book on that?

Counterfactuals are for people who can’t “face the facts”

A good book? I suggest Karen Armstrong’s “The Great Transformation”

No no no no no.

Counterfactuals are there so that you can compare them to things that correspond to the observable, actual world and thereby distinguish it from merely possible ones.

It doesn’t have anything to do with people’s feelings about facts. And a counterfactual analysis isn’t a rhetorical trick to validate things that didn’t happen, if anything, they’re the opposite.

Start with some David Lewis.

fitelson.org/epistemology/lewis.pdf

He’s got all kinds of shit about logic, and he does a few bits on counterfactual analysis.

As I mentioned in another thread … isn’t our language wonderful … ditto for the sandbox forum

The two individual words “counter” and “factual” … two words with a space between them have a completely different meaning than when the two words are typed without a space … awesome!

But if you did like counterfactuals, then would you have still created this thread?