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Counterfactuals
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Download or read book Counterfactuals written by David Lewis and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-05-28 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Counterfactuals is David Lewis' forceful presentation of and sustained argument for a particular view about propositions which express contrary to fact conditionals, including his famous defense of realism about possible worlds.
Book Synopsis Causation and Counterfactuals by : John Collins
Download or read book Causation and Counterfactuals written by John Collins and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2004-06-25 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One philosophical approach to causation sees counterfactual dependence as the key to the explanation of causal facts: for example, events c (the cause) and e (the effect) both occur, but had c not occurred, e would not have occurred either. The counterfactual analysis of causation became a focus of philosophical debate after the 1973 publication of the late David Lewis's groundbreaking paper, "Causation," which argues against the previously accepted "regularity" analysis and in favor of what he called the "promising alternative" of the counterfactual analysis. Thirty years after Lewis's paper, this book brings together some of the most important recent work connecting—or, in some cases, disputing the connection between—counterfactuals and causation, including the complete version of Lewis's Whitehead lectures, "Causation as Influence," a major reworking of his original paper. Also included is a more recent essay by Lewis, "Void and Object," on causation by omission. Several of the essays first appeared in a special issue of the Journal of Philosophy, but most, including the unabridged version of "Causation as Influence," are published for the first time or in updated forms. Other topics considered include the "trumping" of one event over another in determining causation; de facto dependence; challenges to the transitivity of causation; the possibility that entities other than events are the fundamental causal relata; the distinction between dependence and production in accounts of causation; the distinction between causation and causal explanation; the context-dependence of causation; probabilistic analyses of causation; and a singularist theory of causation.
Book Synopsis Interpretable Machine Learning by : Christoph Molnar
Download or read book Interpretable Machine Learning written by Christoph Molnar and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2020 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about making machine learning models and their decisions interpretable. After exploring the concepts of interpretability, you will learn about simple, interpretable models such as decision trees, decision rules and linear regression. Later chapters focus on general model-agnostic methods for interpreting black box models like feature importance and accumulated local effects and explaining individual predictions with Shapley values and LIME. All interpretation methods are explained in depth and discussed critically. How do they work under the hood? What are their strengths and weaknesses? How can their outputs be interpreted? This book will enable you to select and correctly apply the interpretation method that is most suitable for your machine learning project.
Book Synopsis Counterfactuals and Probability by : Moritz Schulz
Download or read book Counterfactuals and Probability written by Moritz Schulz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moritz Schulz explores counterfactual thought and language: what would have happened if things had gone a different way. Counterfactual questions may concern large scale derivations (what would have happened if Nixon had launched a nuclear attack) or small scale evaluations of minor derivations (what would have happened if I had decided to join a different profession). A common impression, which receives a thorough defence in the book, is that oftentimes we find it impossible to know what would have happened. However, this does not mean that we are completely at a loss: we are typically capable of evaluating counterfactual questions probabilistically: we can say what would have been likely or unlikely to happen. Schulz describes these probabilistic ways of evaluating counterfactual questions and turns the data into a novel account of the workings of counterfactual thought.
Book Synopsis What Might Have Been by : Neal J. Roese
Download or read book What Might Have Been written by Neal J. Roese and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2014-01-14 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Within a few short years, research on counterfactual thinking has mushroomed, establishing itself as one of the signature domains within social psychology. Counterfactuals are thoughts of what might have been, of possible past outcomes that could have taken place. Counterfactuals and their implications for perceptions of time and causality have long fascinated philosophers, but only recently have social psychologists made them the focus of empirical inquiry. Following the publication of Kahneman and Tversky's seminal 1982 paper, a burgeoning literature has implicated counterfactual thinking in such diverse judgments as causation, blame, prediction, and suspicion; in such emotional experiences as regret, elation, disappointment and sympathy; and also in achievement, coping, and intergroup bias. But how do such thoughts come about? What are the mechanisms underlying their operation? How do their consequences benefit, or harm, the individual? When is their generation spontaneous and when is it strategic? This volume explores these and other numerous issues by assembling contributions from the most active researchers in this rapidly expanding subfield of social psychology. Each chapter provides an in-depth exploration of a particular conceptual facet of counterfactual thinking, reviewing previous work, describing ongoing, cutting-edge research, and offering novel theoretical analysis and synthesis. As the first edited volume to bring together the many threads of research and theory on counterfactual thinking, this book promises to be a source of insight and inspiration for years to come.
Book Synopsis Understanding Counterfactuals, Understanding Causation by : Christoph Hoerl
Download or read book Understanding Counterfactuals, Understanding Causation written by Christoph Hoerl and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-27 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How are causal judgements such as 'The ice on the road caused the traffic accident' connected with counterfactual judgements such as 'If there had not been any ice on the road, the traffic accident would not have happened'? This volume throws new light on this question by uniting, for the first time, psychological and philosophical approaches to causation and counterfactuals. Traditionally, philosophers have primarily been interested in connections between causal and counterfactual claims on the level of meaning or truth-conditions. More recently, however, they have also increasingly turned their attention to psychological connections between causal and counterfactual understanding or reasoning. At the same time, there has been a surge in interest in empirical work on causal and counterfactual cognition amongst developmental, cognitive, and social psychologists—much of it inspired by work in philosophy. In this volume, twelve original contributions from leading philosophers and psychologists explore in detail what bearing empirical findings might have on philosophical concerns about counterfactuals and causation, and how, in turn, work in philosophy might help clarify the issues at stake in empirical work on the cognitive underpinnings of, and relationships between, causal and counterfactual thought.
Book Synopsis The Science of Can and Can't by : Chiara Marletto
Download or read book The Science of Can and Can't written by Chiara Marletto and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young theoretical physicist's guide to how the radical new science of counterfactuals can reveal the full scope of our universe There is a vast class of properties that science has so far almost entirely neglected. These properties are central to an understanding of physical reality both at an everyday level and at the level of fundamental phenomena, yet they have traditionally been thought of as impossible to incorporate into fundamental explanations. They relate not only to what is true - the actual - but to what could be true - the counterfactual. This is the science of can and can't. Chiara Marletto, a pioneer in this field, explores the promise that this fascinating, far-reaching approach holds not only for revolutionizing how fundamental physics is formulated, but also for confronting existing technological challenges, from delivering the next generation of information-processing devices to designing AI. In each chapter, Marletto sets out how counterfactuals can solve a vexed open problem in science, and demonstrates that by contemplating the possible as well as the actual, we can break down barriers to knowledge and form a more complete and fruitful picture of the universe. 'Clear, sharp and imaginative... The Science of Can and Can't will open the doors to a dazzling set of concepts and ideas that will change deeply the way you look at the world' David Deutsch, bestselling author of The Beginning of Infinity
Book Synopsis Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics by : Philip E. Tetlock
Download or read book Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics written by Philip E. Tetlock and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political scientists often ask themselves what might have been if history had unfolded differently: if Stalin had been ousted as General Party Secretary or if the United States had not dropped the bomb on Japan. Although scholars sometimes scoff at applying hypothetical reasoning to world politics, the contributors to this volume--including James Fearon, Richard Lebow, Margaret Levi, Bruce Russett, and Barry Weingast--find such counterfactual conjectures not only useful, but necessary for drawing causal inferences from historical data. Given the importance of counterfactuals, it is perhaps surprising that we lack standards for evaluating them. To fill this gap, Philip Tetlock and Aaron Belkin propose a set of criteria for distinguishing plausible from implausible counterfactual conjectures across a wide range of applications. The contributors to this volume make use of these and other criteria to evaluate counterfactuals that emerge in diverse methodological contexts including comparative case studies, game theory, and statistical analysis. Taken together, these essays go a long way toward establishing a more nuanced and rigorous framework for assessing counterfactual arguments about world politics in particular and about the social sciences more broadly.
Download or read book Altered Pasts written by Richard J. Evans and published by Brandeis University Press. This book was released on 2014-02-04 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ê A bullet misses its target in Sarajevo, a would-be Austrian painter gets into the Viennese academy, Lord Halifax becomes British prime minister in 1940 instead of Churchill: seemingly minor twists of fate on which world-shaking events might have hinged. Alternative history has long been the stuff of parlor games, war-gaming, and science fiction, but over the past few decades it has become a popular stomping ground for serious historians. The historian Richard J. Evans now turns a critical, slightly jaundiced eye on a subject typically the purview of armchair historians. The bookÕs main concern is examining the intellectual fallout from historical counterfactuals, which the author defines as Òalternative versions of the past in which one alteration in the timeline leads to a different outcome from the one we know actually occurred.Ó What if Britain had stood at the sidelines during the First World War? What if the Wehrmacht had taken Moscow? The author offers an engaging and insightful introduction to the genre, while discussing the reasons for its revival in popularity, the role of historical determinism, and the often hidden agendas of the counterfactual historian. Most important, Evans takes counterfactual history seriously, looking at the insights, pitfalls, and intellectual implications of changing one thread in the weave of history. A wonderful critical introduction to an often-overlooked genre for scholars and casual readers of history alike.
Download or read book IFS written by W.L. Harper and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With publication of the present volume, The University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science enters its second phase. The first fourteen volumes in the Series were produced under the managing editorship of Professor James J. Leach, with the cooperation of a local editorial board. Many of these volumes resulted from colloguia and workshops held in con nection with the University of Western Ontario Graduate Programme in Philosophy of Science. Throughout its seven year history, the Series has been devoted to publication of high quality work in philosophy of science con sidered in its widest extent, including work in philosophy of the special sciences and history of the conceptual development of science. In future, this general editorial emphasis will be maintained, and hopefully, broadened to include important works by scholars working outside the local context. Appointment of a new managing editor, together with an expanded editorial board, brings with it the hope of an enlarged international presence for the Series. Serving the publication needs of those working in the various subfields within philosophy of science is a many-faceted operation. Thus in future the Series will continue to produce edited proceedings of worthwhile scholarly meetings and edited collections of seminal background papers. How ever, the publication priorities will shift emphasis to favour production of monographs in the various fields covered by the scope of the Series. THE MANAGING EDITOR vii W. L. Harper, R. Stalnaker, and G. Pearce (eds.), lIs, vii.
Book Synopsis Counterfactuals and Scientific Realism by : Michael J. Shaffer
Download or read book Counterfactuals and Scientific Realism written by Michael J. Shaffer and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-08-13 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author attempts to show that scientific realism is compatible with the presence of idealization in the sciences. His main contention is that idealized theories can be treated as counterfactuals about how things are in worlds that are similar to but simpler than the actual world.
Book Synopsis Counterfactuals by : Christopher Prendergast
Download or read book Counterfactuals written by Christopher Prendergast and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-04-04 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are counterfactuals and what is their point? In many cases, none at all. It may be true that if kangaroos didn't have tails, they would fall over, but they do have tails and if they didn't they wouldn't be kangaroos (or would they?). This is the sort of thing that can give counterfactuals a bad name, as inhabitants of a La La Land of the mind. On the other hand, counterfactuals do useful service across a broad range of disciplines in both the sciences and the humanities, including philosophy, history, cosmology, biology, cognitive psychology, jurisprudence, economics, art history, literary theory. They are also richly, albeit sometimes treacherously, present in the everyday human realm of how our lives are both imagined and lived: in the 'crossroads' scenario of decision-making, the place of regret in retrospective assessments of paths taken and not taken, and, at the outer limit, as the wish not to have been born. Christopher Prendergast take us on a dizzying exploratory journey through some of these intellectual and human landscapes, mobilizing a wide range of reference from antiquity to the present, and sustained by the belief that, whether as help or hindrance, and with many variations across cultures, counterfactual thinking and imagining are fundamental to what it is to be human.
Book Synopsis Virtual History: Alternatives And Counterfactuals by : Niall Ferguson
Download or read book Virtual History: Alternatives And Counterfactuals written by Niall Ferguson and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2008-08-06 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What if there had been no American War of Independence? What if Hitler had invaded Britain? What if Kennedy had lived? What if Russia had won the Cold War? Niall Ferguson, author of the highly acclaimed The Pity of War, leads the charge in this historically rigorous series of separate voyages into “imaginary time” and provides far-reaching answers to these intriguing questions.Ferguson's brilliant 90-page introduction doubles as a manifesto on the methodology of counter-factual history. His equally masterful afterword traces the likely historical ripples that would have proceeded from the maintenance of Stuart rule in England. This breathtaking narrative gives us a convincing, detailed “alternative history” of the West—from the accession of “James III” in 1701, to a Nazi-occupied England, to a U.S. Prime Minister Kennedy who lives to complete his term.
Book Synopsis Impact Evaluation in Practice, Second Edition by : Paul J. Gertler
Download or read book Impact Evaluation in Practice, Second Edition written by Paul J. Gertler and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2016-09-12 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second edition of the Impact Evaluation in Practice handbook is a comprehensive and accessible introduction to impact evaluation for policy makers and development practitioners. First published in 2011, it has been used widely across the development and academic communities. The book incorporates real-world examples to present practical guidelines for designing and implementing impact evaluations. Readers will gain an understanding of impact evaluations and the best ways to use them to design evidence-based policies and programs. The updated version covers the newest techniques for evaluating programs and includes state-of-the-art implementation advice, as well as an expanded set of examples and case studies that draw on recent development challenges. It also includes new material on research ethics and partnerships to conduct impact evaluation. The handbook is divided into four sections: Part One discusses what to evaluate and why; Part Two presents the main impact evaluation methods; Part Three addresses how to manage impact evaluations; Part Four reviews impact evaluation sampling and data collection. Case studies illustrate different applications of impact evaluations. The book links to complementary instructional material available online, including an applied case as well as questions and answers. The updated second edition will be a valuable resource for the international development community, universities, and policy makers looking to build better evidence around what works in development.
Book Synopsis Mental Causation by : Thomas Kroedel
Download or read book Mental Causation written by Thomas Kroedel and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-12-19 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a comprehensive account of how the mind causes things to happen in the physical world. This book is also available as Open Access.
Book Synopsis Mappings in Thought and Language by : Gilles Fauconnier
Download or read book Mappings in Thought and Language written by Gilles Fauconnier and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997-06-13 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meaning in everyday thought and language is constructed at lightning speed. We are not conscious of the staggering complexity of the cognitive operations that drive our simplest behavior. This 1997 book examines a central component of meaning construction: the mappings that link mental spaces. A deep result of the research is that the same principles operate at the highest levels of scientific, artistic, and literary thought, and at the lower levels of elementary understanding and sentence meaning. Some key cognitive operations are analogical mappings, conceptual integration and blending, discourse management, induction and recursion. The analyses are based on a rich array of attested data in ordinary language, humor, action and design, science, and narratives. Phenomena that receive attention include counterfactuals; time, tense, and mood; opacity; metaphor; fictive motion; grammatical constructions; quantification over cognitive domains.
Book Synopsis Understanding Counterfactuals, Understanding Causation by : Christoph Hoerl
Download or read book Understanding Counterfactuals, Understanding Causation written by Christoph Hoerl and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-11-03 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twelve essays explore what bearing empirical findings might have on philosophical concerns about counterfactuals and causation, and how, in turn, work in philosophy might help clarify issues in empirical work on the relationships between causal and counterfactual thought.
