Moritz Schulz explores counterfactual thought and language: what would have happened if things had gone a different way. Counterfactual questions may concern large scale derivations (what would have happened if Nixon had launched a nuclear attack) or small scale evaluations of minor derivations (what would have happened if I had decided to join a different profession). A common impression, which receives a thorough defence in the book, is that oftentimes we find it impossible to know what would have happened. However, this does not mean that we are completely at a loss: we are typically capable of evaluating counterfactual questions probabilistically: we can say what would have been likely or unlikely to happen. Schulz describes these probabilistic ways of evaluating counterfactual questions and turns the data into a novel account of the workings of counterfactual thought.

About the Author
Moritz Schulz studied Mathematics and Philosophy at the University of Hamburg before completing a BPhil at Oxford University. Shultz received his PhD from the Humboldt University of Berlin in 2011. Since then, he completed a post-doc at the University of Barcelona and acted as an assistant at the University of Tubingen before taking up his current role as junior professor at the University of Hamburg.

Reviews
This is an exciting investigation of the semantics of counterfactuals that I highly recommend to both experts and people who want to catch up with recent results in the literature. It addresses both epistemic and metaphysical aspects of counterfactuals, and develops a novel refinement of the standard semantics. ... a well written and original study that merits reading from various perspectives. * Holger Andreas, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *



Book Information
ISBN 9780198785958
Author Moritz Schulz
Format Hardback
Page Count 248
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 424g
Dimensions(mm) 223mm * 152mm * 20mm