Journal
BRITISH JOURNAL FOR THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Volume 62, Issue 1, Pages 71-98Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/bjps/axq012
Keywords
-
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
David Lewis ([1986b]) gives an attractive and familiar account of counterfactual dependence in the standard context. This account has recently been subject to a counterexample from Adam Elga ([2000]). In this article, I formulate a Lewisian response to Elga's counterexample. The strategy is to add an extra criterion to Lewis's similarity metric, which determines the comparative similarity of worlds. This extra criterion instructs us to take special science laws into consideration as well as fundamental laws. I argue that the Second Law of Thermodynamics should be seen as a special science law, and give a brief account of what Lewisian special science laws should look like. If successful, this proposal blocks Elga's counterexample.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available