[SydPhil] UNSW Philosophy Seminar Oct 27

[Timothy O'Leary]

*What I Would Ask David Lewis About Counterfactuals If I Could*


*Alan Hájek, ANU*

*Abstract:*



There are many philosophical questions that I wish I could ask David Lewis.
Several of them concern counterfactuals, which he famously analysed and
often appealed to in his work. They include the following:



You came very close to the view that most counterfactuals are false at
points in your writings. Why didn’t you take the extra step and endorse the
view?



You were famously a contextualist about counterfactuals, yet that seems in
tension with various things that you say. How much of a contextualist were
you?



You were not a contextualist at all about indicative conditionals. Why did
you give such different analyses of counterfactuals and indicative
conditionals?



I also have some questions about the logic of counterfactuals, concerning
their antecedents.



I did get to ask David why he liked Australia so much, and I will share his
answer.


*Speaker:*

*Alan Hájek *joined the Philosophy Program at RSSS, ANU, as Professor of
Philosophy in 2005. His research interests include the philosophical
foundations of probability and decision theory, epistemology, the
philosophy of science, metaphysics, and the philosophy of religion. His
paper "What Conditional Probability Could Not Be" won the 2004 American
Philosophical Association Article Prize for "the best article published in
the previous two years" by a "younger scholar". Two of his articles were
selected by *The Philosopher’s Annual* as “one of the ten best articles in
philosophy” in the previous year: “Waging War on Pascal’s Wager” (2004),
and “Degrees of Commensurability and the Repugnant Conclusion”, with Wlodek
Rabinowicz (2022).

*When/Where:*

27 October 2026

12:00-1:30pm

UNSW Sydney

Morven Brown 209 + Online Join the meeting now
<https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/429296517793544?p=MtcIZ5MiH1tnI12sb9>



*Contact *Timothy O'Leary: t.oleary at unsw.edu.au