A counterfactual is a scenario that will occur if an agent chooses a certain action, or that would have occurred if an agent had chosen an action they did not. Toknow with certainty what happened in the past is the sovereign desire of all historians. A counterfactual conditional abbreviated cf, is a conditional with a false ifclause. Counterfactual explanations without opening the black box. Students should read it to gain an understanding and chronology of u. Using an algorithm developed in king and zeng 2006a to identify whether counterfactual points are within the convex hull of the. The textbook is intended to supply basic background information about u. He is the author of paper and iron, the house of rothschilds, and the pity of war.
Counterfactuals describe a dependency on the external facts that lead to that decision without the need to convey the internal state or logic of an algorithm. Counterfactuals also enable us to describe why plans fail. Counterfactuals and historical possibility philsciarchive. Yet counterexamples have emerged, which suggest a need to invoke causal independence, and thus threaten conceptual circularity. Alternatives and counterfactuals niall ferguson these include the pity of war on wwi, the war of the world about the major conflicts in the 20th century including a stunning chapter on the armed slave labor camp that was the soviet union, and this book virtual history on counterfactual or what if history. Obviously, most sentences in such a history might not actually be counterfactuals, but the main theses will be. Why historians and everyone else should care about. Find all the books, read about the author, and more. Counterfactual considerations effective altruism concepts.
What if counterfactuals were acceptable in history. Alternatives and counterfactuals ebook, remember to refer to the button under and download the file or get access to other information which are in conjuction with virtual history. The blessed isles and counterfactual history in sallust. The basic books edition is reprinted by arrangement with papermac, an imprint of macmillan publishers. Counterfactuals, causal independence and conceptual. Roese northwestern university counterfactuals are mental representations of alternatives to the past and produce consequences that are both beneficial and aversive to the individual. For instance, we can consider a counterfactual scenario in which the effective altruism community was never set up, or another in which it was called effective giving rather than effective altruism. Even when, early in tiieir preparation, the harshreality ofthe inevitability of uncertainty sets in to shake their peace. Much of the material was presented at the whitehead lectures at harvard, 2009, the townsend lectures at berkeley, 2010, the nagel lecture at columbia, 2010, a conference on propositions and samesaying at sydney university, 2010, and at talks to the philosophy departments of university of miami and virginia commonwealth. A hypothetical state of the world, used to assess the impact of an action. They refer to imagined alternatives to something that has actually occurred. Recognizing the exaggeration ways to get this book virtual history alternatives and counterfactuals is additionally useful.
You have remained in right site to start getting this info. Counterfactual reasoning is basic to human cognition and is ubiquitous in commonsense reasoning as well as in formalized discourse. Counterfactual history, also sometimes referred to as virtual history, is a recent form of historiography which attempts to answer what if questions known as counterfactuals. Giles, oxford, ox1 3js, uk and the alan turing institute, british library, 96 euston road, london, nw1 2db, uk. Using a virtual history conference to study the iraq war. He writes regularly for the times literary supplement, and lives in oxford. Everyday low prices on a huge range of new releases and classic fiction. Featured texts all books all texts latest this just in smithsonian libraries fedlink us genealogy lincoln collection. Humean counterfactuals martin bunzl there is nothing like quoting hume himself to support a nonhumean view of causation. These include the pity of war on wwi, the war of the world about the major conflicts in the 20th century including a stunning chapter on the armed slave labor camp that was the soviet union, and this book virtual history on counterfactual or what if history. A revealedpreference theory of strategic counterfactuals. Alternatives and counteractuals edited by niall ferguson basib c books a member of the perseus books group. The term counterfactual conditional was coined by nelson goodman in 1947, extending roderick chisholms 1946 notion of a contrarytofact conditional.
Add to my selection delete from my selection pdf version printerfriendly. Schroeder this essay, though it may seem to do so, does not take a determinist stand either on counterfactual reasoning and contingency in history in general or on the origins of world war i. Embedded counterfactuals and world war i as an unavoidable. And if one holds a sine qua non view of causation, there is no better passage to quote from the humean corpus than the following. The example we have already mentioned, if the electricity hadnt failed, dinner would have been ready on time, is typical. Closecall counterfactuals and beliefsystem defenses. Counterfactuals and causation are closely connected so. Counterfactuals are mental simulations of variations on a theme. Muses about history as the study where everything unexpected in its. But in spite of its lack of logical content, the statement does explain why.
Sallust, roman historiography, counterfactual history, sertorius, pompey, blessed isles. Alternatives and counterfactuals by ferguson, niall isbn. Counterfactuals, causal independence counterfactuals, causal independence and conceptual circularity j onathan s chaffer david lewiss semantics for counterfactuals remains the standard view. Alternatives and counterfactuals paperback may 1, 2011. It seeks to explore history and historical incidents by means of extrapolating a timeline in which certain key historical events did not happen or had an outcome which was different from that which did in fact occur.
Tetlock and parker, for example, assert the impossibility of avoiding counterfactual history if we hope to go beyond bare description of what happened to explanations of why certain things rather than others happened. Explanations of such occurrences as inattention or neglect can, of course, verge on counterfactual history, with all its potential hazards. Alternatives and counterfactuals in pdf or epub format and read it directly on your mobile phone, computer or any device. Synthetic counterfactual evidence and the effects of ethnic fractionalization, abstract there is a consensus that civil wars entail enormous economic costs, but there is little systematic analysis of the determinants of their heterogeneous destructiveness. R software for evaluating counterfactuals whatif will indicate whether a given counterfactual is an extrapolation and therefore risking more model dependence or a safer interpolation. Of such historical endeavors, four questions must i will write only about the 90 or so page introduction to this volume by the editor, niall ferguson, which i began by reading assiduously and ended by skimming quickly. Four features of historical counterfactuals extinct. The assertion john has stopped beating his wife is made only conditionally. Virtual history was first published in hardcover in great britain by picador in 1997.
Alternatives and counterfactuals to save virtual history. Counterfactual meaning in the cambridge english dictionary. Alternatives and counterfactuals by ferguson, niall from amazons fiction books store. I was not almost wrong but i was almost right philip e.
What if britain had stayed out of the first world war. Niall ferguson has written several fine books that are mustreads for educated people. The present paper expands on material in the first part of fine. It drives them relentlessly in their search for knowledge and understanding. Counterfactual history, also sometimes referred to as virtual history, is a form of historiography.
Counterfactual is a protocol for scalable blockchain applications. Counterfactual history, also sometimes referred to as virtual history, is a form of historiography that attempts to answer what if questions known as counterfactuals. Embedded counterfactuals and world war i as an unavoidable war. It is, at the very root, the idea of conjecturing on what did not happen, or what might have happened, in order to understand what did happen. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders. The role of using counterfactuals when searching for explanations has not received much attention in this literature. Counterfactual history wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. History 10mv introduction to american history to 1876. Posted on march 17, 2014 by adam shapiro as historians it seems like were always cautioned against saying what if but the truth is that doing so is a necessary part of history and to pretend otherwise is simply irresponsible. Tetlock ohio state university drawing on samples of professional observers of world politics, this article explores the interrelations among cognitive style, theoretical outlook, and reactions to closecall counterfactuals. What links here related changes upload file special pages permanent link page. These apparently contradictory effects are integrated in a functionalist model of counterfactual thinking.
Counterfactual definition, a conditional statement the first clause of which expresses something contrary to fact, as if i had known. Historians have traditionally refused to ask questions of the past, preferring to assume that whatever happened was inevitable. Counterfactuals and historical possibility some counterfactuals clearly involve historical possibility, and some clearly do not. Counterfactual histories of the great depression1 barry. A revealedpreference theory of strategic counterfactuals marciano siniscalchi october 31, 2011 preliminary. Christopher priests the separation nick hubble among the consequences of the ongoing crisis in academic historical studies provoked by postmodernist and poststructuralist theories see evans has been the rise of both popular and counterfactual history.
Virtual history by niall ferguson fatherland by robert harris the alteration by. To determine its truth value in a given scenario, one has to consider whether in the closest historically possible scenario in which. The counterfactual approach the history of what might have happened is a. From counterfactual history to counternarrative history. Squibs and dlsccsst0n indicates that the speaker is not sure whether 11 is true. But virtual history challenges this complacency as leading historians apply counterfactual arguments to decisive moments in modern history. The implications of virtual history deserve to be meditated by every historian. Barry eichengreen and peter temin as professor balderston notes in his introduction to this volume, history is necessarily written in terms of a model, whether implicitly or explicitly, and a model invariably suggests counterfactuals. Keywords active learning, counterfactuals, iraq war, virtual history. The study of counterfactual speculation has increasingly engaged the interest of scholars in a wide range of domains such as philosophy, human geography. Counterfactuals and the second law1 barry loewer i will be discussing a kind of conditional or counterfactual typically expressed in english by. When historical counterfactuals are stretched across too many causal links, they become too difficult to substantiate.
Niall ferguson is fellow and tutor in modern history at jesus college, oxford. If history displays some characteristics of chaotic systems, the longer a counterfactual is stretched, the more assumptions must be added, and it becomes impossible to substantiate. Virtual history is the brainchild of niall ferguson, a fellow and tutor in modern history at jesus. Somewhat exceptional in this regard is the witty afterword a virtual history, 16461996 also written by ferguson, in which he adds up all the alternative scenarios outlined in the preceding essays into one continuous narrative.