this “what would have happened” world is logically incoherent.
There is a logical contradiction between the idea that your actions are determined, and the idea that you could have acted differently under the exact same circumstances. There is no such problem if you do not assume determinism, meaning that the “problem” of logical counterfactuals is neither unavoidable nor purely logical—it is not purely logical because a metaphysical assumption, an assumption about the way reality works is involved.
The assumption of determinism is implicit in talking of yourself as a computer programme, and the assumption of indeterminism is implicit in talking about yourself as nonetheless having free will.
A purely logical counterfactual , a logical counterfactual properly so-called, is a hypothetical state of affairs, where a different input or set of preconditions is supposed, and a different, also hypothetical output or result obtains. Such a counterfactual is logically consistent—it just isn’t consistent with what actually occurred.
According to counterfactual nonrealism, there is no fact of the matter about what “would have happened” had a different action been taken.
People calculate logical counterfactuals all the time. You can figure out what output a programme will give in response to an input it has never received by looking at the code. But note
that that is a purely epistemological issue. There may be a separate, ontological, not epistemological issue about real counterfactuals. If you have good reason to believe in determinsim, which you don’t, you should disbelieve in real counterfactuals. But that says nothing about logical counterfacuals. So long as some hygiene is exercised about the epistemological/ontological distinction, and the logical/real disinticntion then there is no problem.
The apparent nondeterminism is, then, only due to the epistemic limitation of the agent at the time of making the decision, a limitation not faced by a later version of the agent (or an outside agent) with more computation power.
Note that problems agents have in introspecting their own decision making are not problems with counterfactuals (real or logical) per se.
This leads to a sort of relativism: what is undetermined from one perspective may be determined from another.
It doesn’t lead to serious relativism, because the perspectives are asymmetrical. The agent that knows more is more right.
A problem that comes up is that of “spurious counterfactuals”
A “spurious” counterfactual is just a logical, as opposed to real, counterfactual. The fact that it could never have occurred means it was never a real counterfactual.
There is a logical contradiction between the idea that your actions are determined, and the idea that you could have acted differently under the exact same circumstances. There is no such problem if you do not assume determinism, meaning that the “problem” of logical counterfactuals is neither unavoidable nor purely logical—it is not purely logical because a metaphysical assumption, an assumption about the way reality works is involved.
The assumption of determinism is implicit in talking of yourself as a computer programme, and the assumption of indeterminism is implicit in talking about yourself as nonetheless having free will.
A purely logical counterfactual , a logical counterfactual properly so-called, is a hypothetical state of affairs, where a different input or set of preconditions is supposed, and a different, also hypothetical output or result obtains. Such a counterfactual is logically consistent—it just isn’t consistent with what actually occurred.
People calculate logical counterfactuals all the time. You can figure out what output a programme will give in response to an input it has never received by looking at the code. But note that that is a purely epistemological issue. There may be a separate, ontological, not epistemological issue about real counterfactuals. If you have good reason to believe in determinsim, which you don’t, you should disbelieve in real counterfactuals. But that says nothing about logical counterfacuals. So long as some hygiene is exercised about the epistemological/ontological distinction, and the logical/real disinticntion then there is no problem.
Note that problems agents have in introspecting their own decision making are not problems with counterfactuals (real or logical) per se.
It doesn’t lead to serious relativism, because the perspectives are asymmetrical. The agent that knows more is more right.
A “spurious” counterfactual is just a logical, as opposed to real, counterfactual. The fact that it could never have occurred means it was never a real counterfactual.