*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: [email protected] --------- SydPhil mailing list To unsubscribe, change your membership options, find answers to common problems, or visit our online archives, please go to the list information page: https://mailman.sydney.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/sydphil
