counterfactuals

23:21 Mar 23, 2015 

My reading (which is limited to this specific passage) is that he's talking about mental states where the link is an unreasonable/unlikely (counterfactual) one. So, somebody stroking their chin might be read by a paranoiac as them making a sign to him that a shave is needed. But there's certainly no cause/effect here and the paranoiac's belief is a priori unreasonable. What I think the passage is discussing are "non sequitur" beliefs which are related only in the mind of the person holding them.

Digressing somewhat, I think Campbell would exclude from "delusions of reference" Chesterton's example that, if one believes one is a poached egg, then it is perfectly logical to want to sit on a piece of toast. There, the delusion is not referential - given the premise, the conclusion is not delusional.

And there I leave it.

21:22 Mar 23, 2015 

Counterfactual can have more than one meaning, depending on the context, but as Danila says, this particular passage is about Campbell's approach to causation of mental states, not cognition. The passage quoted, in which the term "interventionist counterfactuals" occurs, is about whether one mental state can be said to causally explain another. It is therefore a question of whether counterfactual explanations of causation hold in the context of interventionism: whether they are true or not. So it seems to me quite certain that the term is being used here to refer to counterfactual propositions of the form "if the first mental state did not exist, the second mental state would not exist".

Exactly what "interventionist counterfactuals" are I am not entirely sure. But since Campbell's interventionism, as shown by the passage you have quoted, means the idea that by changing the cause you change the effect, I think it may well mean propositions of the form "If we intervened in such a way that mental state A did not exist, mental state C would not exist either".

18:55 Mar 23, 2015 

IMHO, your ST is saying something different. But it's your ST :-)

18:47 Mar 23, 2015 

the subject is the theory of causation in the mental field, so I think the explanation given by Charles is appropriate.

18:35 Mar 23, 2015 

The given ST continues " As an example, he [Campbell] uses the case of delusions of reference. He says:

[On my] analysis, for one belief to be the cause of another is for intervening
on the first belief to be a way of changing the second. Suppose you believe:
(1) that this man is stroking his chin, and
(2) that this man believes you need a shave.
[…] What is it for the first belief to be a cause of the second? On the interventionist analysis, it is for intervention on the first belief to be a way of changing whether you have the second belief."

So, it's not as extreme as 1984 Doublthink "holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them". But it's heading in that direction, a type of "holding two unrelated beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting one as being causative of the other"

18:28 Mar 23, 2015 

Canceling Updating in the Comprehension of Counterfactuals Embedded in Narratives, de Vega, Manuel, Urrutia, Mabel, Riffo, Bernardo, Memory & Cognition.

"Counterfactual sentences describe what might have been, not what is going on. In other words, the information provided by counterfactuals does not change the protagonist's here-and-now, and should not contribute to situation updating. However, given the dual meaning of counterfactuals, readers could momentarily consider counterfactual information as if it were "real." ... We predict that, immediately after reading a counterfactual sentence, readers will keep accessible both a factual (p & q) and a counterfactual (not-p & not-q) interpretation of the events."

It seems to me that it is this broader definition of a "counterfactual" that is in play here.