Umeå University's logo

umu.sePublications
Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Counterfactuals, indeterminacy, and value: a puzzle
Tel-Hai Academic College, Kiryat Shmona, Upper Galilee, Israel.ORCID iD: 0000-0003-3916-3475
University of Leeds, Woodhouse, Leeds, UK.
2022 (English)In: Synthese, ISSN 0039-7857, E-ISSN 1573-0964, Vol. 200, no 1, article id 51Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

According to the Counterfactual Comparative Account of harm and benefit, an event is overall harmful (/beneficial) for a subject to the extent that this subject would have been better (/worse) off if it had not occurred. In this paper we present a challenge for the Counterfactual Comparative Account (CCA). We argue that if physical processes are chancy in the manner suggested by our best physical theories, then CCA faces a dilemma: If it is developed in line with the standard approach to counterfactuals, then it delivers that the value of any event for a subject is indeterminate to the extreme, ranging from terribly harmful to highly beneficial. This problem can only be avoided by developing CCA in line with theories of counterfactuals that allow us to ignore a-typical scenarios. Doing this generates a different problem: when the actual world is itself a-typical we will sometimes get the result that the counterfactual nonoccurrence of an actual benefit is itself a benefit. An account of overall harm bearing either of these two implications is deficient. Given the general aspiration to account for deprivational harms and the dominance of the Counterfactual Comparative Account in this respect, theorists of harm and benefit face a deadlock.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Springer Nature, 2022. Vol. 200, no 1, article id 51
National Category
Philosophy
Research subject
Ethics
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-209477DOI: 10.1007/s11229-022-03464-wISI: 000768294000002Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85125656227OAI: oai:DiVA.org:umu-209477DiVA, id: diva2:1765092
Available from: 2023-06-09 Created: 2023-06-09 Last updated: 2023-06-12Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

fulltext(384 kB)78 downloads
File information
File name FULLTEXT01.pdfFile size 384 kBChecksum SHA-512
62560950b1800016800167bd59ec63992e2e29d778edf7766b5b3962a31155e494fe44b97513974b737991ef91d738e23ae7fa3acb532f0c8984b3a8db91b840
Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

Other links

Publisher's full textScopus

Authority records

Peet, Andrew

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Pitcovski, EliPeet, Andrew
In the same journal
Synthese
Philosophy

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar
Total: 78 downloads
The number of downloads is the sum of all downloads of full texts. It may include eg previous versions that are now no longer available

doi
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

doi
urn-nbn
Total: 260 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf