[SEQ RERUN] Can Counterfactuals Be True?

Today’s post, Can Counterfactuals Be True? was originally published on 24 July 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

How can we explain counterfactuals having a truth value, if we don’t talk about “nearby possible worlds” or any of the other explanations offered by philosophers?


Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).

This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we’ll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky’s old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was When (Not) To Use Probabilities, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.

Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day’s sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.