No fact of the middle

Bibliographic Data

ID21364093
AuthorsJill Khoo (0000-0001-8696-0771, Institute of Linguistics, corresponding author), Justin Khoo (Linguistics and Philosophy Massachusetts Institute of Technology Massachusetts United States)
Year2022
Volume56
Issue4
Pages1000-1022
Publication date2022-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueNoûs (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0029-4624 • E-ISSN: 1468-0068
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/nous.12389
OpenAlexW3200970702
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited42

A middle fact is a true proposition about what would have happened had A been true (where A is in fact false), whose truth isn't entailed by any non‐counterfactual facts. I argue that there are no middle facts; if there were, we wouldn't know them, and our ignorance of them would result in ignorance about whether regret is fitting in cases where we clearly know it is. But there's a problem. Consider an unflipped fair coin which is such that no non‐counterfactual fact determines that it would have landed heads had it been flipped (or tails had it been flipped). If there are no middle facts, it's not true that it would have landed heads had it been flipped nor that it would have landed tails had it been flipped. Yet each counterfactual is still possibly true for all we know. I argue that we can resolve this tension in the anti‐middle fact position, further strengthening the case against middle facts

Counterfactual thinking · Economics · Epistemology · Ignorance · Law of excluded middle · Positive economics · Proposition · Regret · Statistics · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Mathematics · Philosophy · Philosophy and Theoretical Science · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment

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Open DOIOpen Access