3.0

credits

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Counterfactual reasoning is reasoning about what would be the case if things had been other than they are: If it had been sunny and so I didn't run into that store for cover from the rain, maybe I would never have met my future partner! How ought one to reason counterfactually? How do people in fact do it? Counterfactual reasoning might seem like a narrow topic, but it is of fundamental importance to both scientific and everyday inquiry, where it is intimately connected to the use of imagination, planning for the future, assessment of and learning from the past, providing explanations, understanding fictions, and constructing experiments. This course will explore both normative and empirical aspects of counterfactual reasoning, drawing upon readings in philosophy, psychology, and linguistics. An overarching goal of this course is to arrive at a better understanding of counterfactuality that is informed by research across these different disciplines.