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Counterfactuality is currently a hotly debated topic. While for some disciplines, such as linguistics, cognitive science, or psychology, counterfactual scenarios have been an important object of study for quite a while, counterfactual thinking has in recent years emerged as a method of study for other disciplines, most notably the social sciences. This volume provides an overview of the current definitions and uses of the concept of counterfactuality in philosophy, historiography, political sciences, psychology, linguistics, physics, and literary studies.

AbstractResearchers often seek to identify the effects of a treatment on a sequence of behaviors, such as whether citizens register to vote and whether they then cast ballots. I show that average treatment effects (ATEs) are only identified until the first behavior (registering to vote) that affects the set of possible subsequent actions (voting). When one action changes the set of possible subsequent actions, it creates 'phantom counterfactuals,' or undefined potential outcomes, which render ATEs unidentified. I show that applied theory allows researchers to diagnose phantom counterfactuals, which helps to recognize unidentified ATEs and focus instead on other estimands that are identified. I illustrate this approach using a stylized model of crime reporting, showing how different theories generate different sets of identified estimands while holding constant an experimental design. I thereby establish the necessity of applied theory for causal identification in empirical research with sequential behavioral outcomes.

In the second wave of feminism it was enough to say that Antonia Dickson co-wrote History of The Kinetograph, the Kinetoscope and the Kineto-Phonograph (1895) with her inventor brother William Kennedy Laurie Dickson. But in a new moment, I utilize Catherine Gallagher's concept of "counterfactual speculation" as a "thought experiment," offering a fuller examination of the time between 1893 and 1896 when Antonia was involved in the experiments around the "projecting" Kinetoscope. "What if Antonia Dickson Had Invented the Kinetoscope?" raises the question of historical outcome, empirical evidence, and causality, offering a way around uncritical reliance on the traditions of historical narrative and testing a new methodology for feminism and film.

This essay discusses Never Built Los Angeles and Unbuilt San Francisco, two exhibits that presented plans for neighborhoods, buildings, and transit infrastructure that were considered for each city but never built. It considers the similarities and differences that have spurred and hindered development in each city.

AbstractIn this paper, we develop a novel response to counterfactual scepticism, the thesis that most ordinary counterfactual claims are false. In the process we aim to shed light on the relationship between debates in the philosophy of science and debates concerning the semantics and pragmatics of counterfactuals. We argue that science is concerned with many domains of inquiry, each with its own characteristic entities and regularities; moreover, statements of scientific law often include an implicit ceteris paribus clause that restricts the scope of the associated regularity to circumstances that are 'fitting' to the domain in question. This observation reveals a way of responding to scepticism while, at the same time, doing justice both to the role of counterfactuals in science and to the complexities inherent in ordinary counterfactual discourse and reasoning.

AbstractAnti-realism is plagued by Fitch's paradox: the remarkable result that if one accepts that all truths are knowable, minimal assumptions about the nature of knowledge entail that every truth is known. Dorothy Edgington suggests to address this problem by understanding p is knowable to be a counterfactual claim, but her proposal must contend with a forceful objection by Timothy Williamson. I revisit Edgington's basic idea and find that Williamson's objection is obviated by a refined understanding of counterfactual knowability that is grounded in possible courses of inquiry. I arrive at a precise definition of knowability that is not just a technical avoidance of paradox, but is metaphysically sound and does justice to the anti-realist idea.

We show how to use multilevel modeling and post-stratification to estimate legislative outcomes under counterfactual representation schemes that, for example, boost the representation of women or translate votes into seats differently. We apply this technique to two research questions: (1) Would the U.S. Congress be less polarized if state delegations were formed according to the principle of party proportional representation? (2) Would there have been stronger support for legalizing same-sex marriage in the U.K. House of Commons if Parliament more closely reflected the population in gender and age?