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Re:Counterfactuals are not causality by GavinMcG on Monday July 26, 2021 @11:44PM (#27968388)
It's tautologically true, in that you used the word "on" in both clauses, and "if on, then on" is always true.

But no, in a meaningful sense it's not a true statement about the world. It's a good guess, and for a statement that simple, there might be no need to go further. For a statement about why a volume is full with too many files, the point is that a nice-sounding "if only" isn't something you can test or be certain of.

Your answer about blind people is a very good guess as well, and the same one I would make, but it's not data.

Re:Counterfactuals are not causality by Jtsummers on Tuesday July 27, 2021 @12:05AM (#27968486)
I actually meant to present that as: Because I didn't flip the switch.

A counterfactual requires posing a situation with changed facts. I stand by my statement, saying "X because not Y" is not a counterfactual on its own. "not Y" is still a (potentially) factual statement. And guesses still aren't counterfactuals. "Maybe the lights aren't on because we didn't flip the switch?" That's a hypothesis, and a testable one. Still not a counterfactual. If we know the flip hasn't been switched, then it's just a fact even if the statement is in the form of not X.

Re:Counterfactuals are not causality by cwp on Tuesday July 27, 2021 @12:35AM (#27968654)
The counterfactual is "if I had flipped the switch, the lights would be on." That is a situation with changed facts, and therefore counterfactual. The tricky bit is the causality. We have to construct an alternate history, with a counterfactual cause and a counterfactual result. And we can't actually know that. Maybe the bulb is burnt out. Maybe there's a power outage just now. Maybe we've blown a fuse. The causality is just conjecture.

Now consider the opposite. The lights are off because the bulb burnt out. That's a lot less ambiguous. If you want to doubt the causality you've got to get all mystical.