Shaky counterfactuals
One reason some folks dislike determinism is that they fear it rules out free will. I’ve addressed that misguided fear several times on this blog. A second reason is that determinism (conjoined with physics) discredits the counterfactual conditionals that people like to assert.* This post takes up that issue.
Some counterfactual conditionals everyone should accept. For example: “If you didn’t exist, then you wouldn’t be reading this post.” That conditional must be true because it’s implied by the necessarily true conditional “If you’re reading this post, then you exist.” You can’t possibly read something without existing.
But most ordinary counterfactuals aren’t like that. For example: “If you weren’t reading this post, then you’d be doing something else.” That’s not implied by any necessarily true statement. On the contrary, I’ve argued that it’s almost certainly false. If you weren’t reading this post, then you wouldn’t exist in the first place.
So the issue is this: Is clinging to counterfactuals such as “If you weren’t reading this post, then you’d be doing something else” worth rejecting determinism and thereby accepting unintelligible magic? It might be if those counterfactuals are Moorean facts, which are things we know more securely than any philosophical view that challenges them.
The classic example of a Moorean fact is philosopher G. E. Moore’s claim that he has hands while displaying his hands during a lecture at the British Academy. Moore says that he knows that claim more securely than he could know the premises of any philosophical argument against the claim. So no philosophical argument can dislodge it.
But ordinary counterfactuals are not Moorean facts. “If you weren’t reading this post, then you’d be doing something else” is much less secure than Moore’s claim to have hands. Indeed, it’s a nontrivial speculation about a situation that didn’t happen. (Neither is my claim “If you weren’t reading this post, then you wouldn’t exist” a Moorean fact; that’s why I argue for it.) My point is that allegiance to ordinary counterfactuals can’t refute determinism. On the contrary, those counterfactuals are a shaky basis for any metaphysical stance.
*In my interview on Brain in a Vat, one of the main reasons my interviewers gave for resisting determinism is that it conflicts with our intuitions about ordinary counterfactual conditionals.
