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.
FREE Two-Day Shipping for Students. Learn more |
| |||||||||||||||
Book Description
Special Offers and Product Promotions
- Buy $50 in qualifying physical textbooks, get $5 in Amazon MP3 Credit. Here's how (restrictions apply)
Editorial Reviews
Review
"'Contrary-to-fact conditionals have provided logical analysts with fascinating puzzles. (This book) has a unitary theme presented clearly and attractively for the most part with only the unavoidable minimum of formal apparatus. The theme is pursued confidently and relentlessly without evasions or qualifications." Times Literary Supplement
"This is an excellent book. It combines shrewd philosophical sense with a fine technical expertise. The statement of views is concise and forthright." Kit Fine, Mind
"This essay is a virtuoso performance." British Journal for the Philosophy of Science
"Beautifully and lucidly written and full of clever ideas. It contains very many philosophical insights and comparisons." J. J. C. Smart, Australasian Journal of Philosophy
From the Back Cover
Counterfactuals is David Lewis's 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. Since its original publication in 1973, it has become a classic of contemporary philosophy, and is essential reading for anyone interested in the logic and metaphysics of counterfactuals. The book also includes an appendix of related writings by Lewis.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
58 of 66 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Philosophical Analysis At Its Best,
By
This review is from: Counterfactuals (Paperback)
"Counterfactuals" is not for the kiddies, or even the "interested general reader", if such a person exists. It is a book by an analytic philosopher, for analytic philosophers. Even among them, it will interest only the mandarins, the true devotees of contemporary analytical metaphysics and modal logic. But, for that select audience, this book is a treasure. It is a paradigm of philosophical analysis, lucid, concise, rigorous, and informed throughout by a luminous clarity of vision. The book concerns itself with a single problem of fundamental philosophical interest and importance: what do counterfactual conditionals mean, and when are they true? And such is the author's consummate brilliance that he manages to solve this problem, in its essentials, in less than a hundred and fifty pages. In this review, I will not attempt to detail its contents, since Amazon already has information about that. I will simply give my own opinion of its significance. The reader who wants to know more should get a copy."Counterfactuals" is that rarest of things: a truly original philosophical work that actually *succeeds* in its stated aim. To my knowledge, the only person, in the whole history of philosophy, to have developed an even remotely similar approach to the problem of counterfactuals is Robert Stalnaker, and Lewis' work is I think indisputably superior, subsuming Stalnaker's approach as a special (and doubtful) case. (Both works were, historically speaking, made yesterday--a mere generation ago.) If I am right in thinking that Lewis' theory is substantially correct, then he would seem to be the first man in history to have achieved a philosophically adequate understanding of counterfactuals. This book, in my opinion, represents a fundamental breakthrough in logic and metaphysics, for which we owe its author a debt as great as that owed to Kripke, perhaps even comparable to that which mathematics and logic owe to the works of Frege.
8 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great book,
By JSMagus (Columbus, Ohio, Earth) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Counterfactuals (Paperback)
This is an excellently written book on modal logic. Serious readers, please. Just a warning. Hah.
3 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
if pigs had wings they could fly,
By
This review is from: Counterfactuals (Paperback)
I wrote my doctoral dissertation on Lewis's theory of possible worlds, part of which is contained in Counterfactuals. I regret every second of it.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Inside This Book
(learn more)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
First Sentence:
'If kangaroos had no tails, they would topple over' seems to me to mean something like this: in any possible state of affairs in which kangaroos have no tails, and which resembles our actual state of affairs as much as kangaroos having no tails permits it to, the kangaroos topple over. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Limit Assumption, Stalnaker's Assumption, New York, Co-sphere Lemma, Conditional Excluded Middle, Decidability of Three Logics of Counterfactual, Ernest Adams, Journal of Philosophy, Hypothetical Reasoning, Journal of Philosophical Logic, Logic of Conditional, Los Angeles, Saul Kripke, University of California New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
'If kangaroos had no tails, they would topple over' seems to me to mean something like this: in any possible state of affairs in which kangaroos have no tails, and which resembles our actual state of affairs as much as kangaroos having no tails permits it to, the kangaroos topple over. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Limit Assumption, Stalnaker's Assumption, New York, Co-sphere Lemma, Conditional Excluded Middle, Decidability of Three Logics of Counterfactual, Ernest Adams, Journal of Philosophy, Hypothetical Reasoning, Journal of Philosophical Logic, Logic of Conditional, Los Angeles, Saul Kripke, University of California New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 12
books:
See all 12 books this book cites
- Logical Theory and Semantic Analysis: Essays Dedicated to Stig Kanger on his Fiftieth Birthday (Synthese Library) by S. Stenlund in Back Matter
- Aspects of Scientific Explanation: And Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science by Carl G. Hempel on page 65
- Ontological Relativity by W. V. Quine on page 89
- From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays, Second Revised Edition by W. V. Quine on page 87
- Philosophical Logic (Synthese Library) by J.W. Davis in Back Matter
See all 12 books this book cites
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
So You'd Like to...
|
|
