That’s an interesting point. I suppose it might be viable to acknowledge that the problem taken literally doesn’t require the prediction to be correct outside of the factual, but nonetheless claim that we should resolve the vagueness inherent in the question about what exactly the counterfactual is by constructing it to meet this condition. I wouldn’t necessarily be strongly against this—my issue is confusion about what an Oracle’s prediction necessarily entails.
That’s an interesting point. I suppose it might be viable to acknowledge that the problem taken literally doesn’t require the prediction to be correct outside of the factual, but nonetheless claim that we should resolve the vagueness inherent in the question about what exactly the counterfactual is by constructing it to meet this condition. I wouldn’t necessarily be strongly against this—my issue is confusion about what an Oracle’s prediction necessarily entails.
Regarding, your notion about things being magically stipulated, I suppose there’s some possible resemblance there with the ideas I proposed before in Counterfactuals As A Matter of Social Convention, although The Nature of Counterfactuals describes where my views have shifted to since then.