Counterfactual Argument Research Articles

Organizational normativity and teleology: a critique

In recent years, so-called organizational accounts (OA) have emerged in theoretical biology as a powerful, viable strategy for naturalizing teleology and normativity. In the wake of the theoretical tradition of autopoiesis and biological autonomy, OA notably propose a new meaning for the notion of “organization,” which they claim to be capable, among other things, of grounding objective and observer-independent normative teleological ascriptions. In this paper, I focus on this last claim, asking “How are ‘organization’ and ‘normativity’ conceptually connected?” The basic insight mobilized by the OA framework to answer this question is most often expressed as a counterfactual argument regarding the “conditions of existence” of organized entities. In this paper, I show that careful scrutiny of this core OA argument reveals a substantial shortcoming. To make this point, I first analyze how the OA framework positions the idea of “conditions of existence” via the notions of “dependence”, “constraint,” and “closure.” Second, I consider various possible interpretations of the OA counterfactual argument grounding norms. I conclude that the implications of this argument do not enable OA to deliver what they promise, i.e., a straightforward link between organization and norms. I argue that a different strategy is needed to capture the basic organizational intuition about biological normativitiy and suggest that a stipulative route might be better suitable to that end.

Editor's Introduction

Editor's Introduction

Causal attribution fractions, and the attribution of smoking and BMI to the landscape of disease incidence in UK Biobank

Unlike conventional epidemiological studies that use observational data to estimate “associations” between risk factors and disease, the science of causal inference has identified situations where causal estimates can be made from observational data, using results such as the “backdoor criteria”. Here these results are combined with established epidemiological methods, to calculate simple population attribution fractions that estimate the causal influence of risk factors on disease incidence, and can be estimated using conventional proportional hazards methods. A counterfactual argument gives an attribution fraction for individuals. Causally meaningful attribution fractions cannot be constructed for all risk factors or confounders, but they can for the important established risk factors of smoking and body mass index (BMI). Using the new results, the causal attribution of smoking and BMI to the incidence of 226 diseases in the UK Biobank are estimated, and summarised in terms of disease chapters from the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10). The diseases most strongly attributed to smoking and BMI are identified, finding 11 with attribution fractions greater than 0.5, and a small number with protective associations. The results provide new tools to quantify the causal influence of risk factors such as smoking and BMI on disease, and survey the causal influence of smoking and BMI on the landscape of disease incidence in the UK Biobank population.

Introduction

Abstract Atrocity prevention is a difficult and complex undertaking, one that needs concerted effort by multiple stakeholders to be successful. This article seeks to help bridge the acknowledged gap between the promise of atrocity prevention and its implementation by providing an introduction about lessons learned from various case studies. By doing so, it seeks to develop an evidence base of effective atrocity prevention efforts to benefit practitioners of atrocity prevention. To ensure the evaluation is as rigorous as possible, five principles were incorporated into the research. One, to apply a reasonableness test so as not to confuse association with causation. Two, use a mixed methods approach for data collection. Three, triangulate data with multiple sources. Four, validate data with participants and experts to determine a level of accuracy. And five, consider a counterfactual argument of what would have happened if the preventive action(s) had not occurred.

Unintentional neo-colonialism? Three generations of trade and development relationship between EU and West Africa

ABSTRACT This article argues that the limited economic transformation in West African countries is a function of the interaction between domestic elites’ quest for political survival and the EU’s international trade partnership with former colonies (Yaoundé Convention 1963–1975; Lomé Convention 1975–2000 and Cotonou Agreement 2000–present). The counterfactual argument, demonstrated clearly in a comparative study (of the Yaoundé era), is that in the absence of the EU’s trade partnership, ruling elites would have had to negotiate their survival by promoting economic change instead of colonial continuity. As not all West African countries joined the Yaoundé Conventions (1963–1975), a comparison of the affiliated and the non-affiliated countries was conducted from 1960 to 1975. Analysis of the differences between the countries in these three areas (economic crisis, political crisis with economic origins and diversification) reveals two trajectories in West Africa: neo-colonialism (for affiliated countries); and economic change (for unaffiliated countries).

PMH43 Difference in Precision of Retention Estimates for Mandated Versus Patient-Chosen Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT) Alternatives for Opioid Use Disorder (OUD)

We demonstrate how estimates of retention on OUD treatment in methadone clinics (MC) vs office-based buprenorphine (OB) in environments where treatments are mandated by protocol (MC=82.6%; OB=85.3%) are generally optimistic relative to results to be expected when patients are offered choices of treatments. Manski called this estimation problem a “mixing problem.” Various solutions are possible; most yield only bounds on estimates, the simplest being that for which no assumptions are employed. The method employs a counterfactual argument, using “potential” outcomes of treatment assignments, only one of which is observed. It suggests that there are 4 fractions of patients, two for which treatment is inconsequential (patients succeed or fail regardless of treatment) and two for which only one or the other of the treatments is successful. Speculation on the sizes of these fractions consistent with the observed trial outcomes with mandated treatments yields bounds on retention for a scenario where patients choose which of the two treatments they receive. If outcomes are ordered (e.g. for all patients, OB > MC) then the success percentage bounds correspond to those observed when mandated [82.6%, 85.3%]. This is also the case if treatment is independent of outcomes. However, when employing no assumptions (no prior information), bounds on retention percentages when patients have choices are shown to be wider [67.9%, 100%] than the observed range in the trial. Outside trials, patients generally have treatment choices and outcomes will generally differ from environments with mandated treatments. The wider bounds result from patients choosing treatments at the extremes (optimizing or minimizing their success), choosing treatments that work (or don’t work) for them. Perfect foresight being rare, predicting outcomes must, absent assumptions, allow for both extremes – and anywhere in between. Other ranges are possible with various assumptions on prior outcomes or treatment policies.

Nonlocality claims are inconsistent with Hilbert-space quantum mechanics

It is shown that when properly analyzed using principles consistent with the use of a Hilbert space to describe microscopic properties, quantum mechanics is a local theory: one system cannot influence another system with which it does not interact. Claims to the contrary based on quantum violations of Bell inequalities are shown to be incorrect. A specific example traces a violation of the CHSH Bell inequality in the case of a spin-3/2 particle to the noncommutation of certain quantum operators in a situation where (non)locality is not an issue. A consistent histories analysis of what quantum measurements measure, in terms of quantum properties, is used to identify the basic problem with derivations of Bell inequalities: the use of classical concepts (hidden variables) rather than a probabilistic structure appropriate to the quantum domain. A difficulty with the original Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) argument for the incompleteness of quantum mechanics is the use of a counterfactual argument which is not valid if one assumes that Hilbert-space quantum mechanics is complete; locality is not an issue. The quantum correlations that violate Bell inequalities can be understood using local quantum common causes. Wavefunction collapse and Schr\"odinger steering are calculational procedures, not physical processes. A general Principle of Einstein Locality rules out nonlocal influences between noninteracting quantum systems. Some suggestions are made for changes in terminology that could clarify discussions of quantum foundations and be less confusing to students.

The counterfactual direct argument

Many have accepted that ordinary counterfactuals and might counterfactuals are duals. In this paper, I show that this thesis leads to paradoxical results when combined with a few different unorthodox yet increasingly popular theses, including the thesis that counterfactuals are strict conditionals. Given Duality and several other theses, we can quickly infer the validity of another paradoxical principle, ‘The Counterfactual Direct Argument’, which says that ‘A> (B or C)’ entails ‘A> (not B> C)’. First, I provide a collapse theorem for the ‘counterfactual direct argument’ (CDA). The counterfactual direct argument entails the logical equivalence of the subjunctive and material conditional, given a variety of assumptions. Second, I provide a semantics that validates the counterfactual direct argument without collapse. This theory further develops extant dynamic accounts of conditionals. I give a new semantics for disjunction, on which A or B is only true in a context when A and B are both unsettled. The resulting framework validates CDA while invalidating other commonly accepted principles concerning the conditional and disjunction.

When the World Came to Banten

This paper aims to demonstrate that pluralism has always been part and parcel of ordinary human lives in Indonesia, and that is was the normmas far back as the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries when Muslim power was at its height in Java and the rest of the archipelago, long before themadvent of European colonial-capitalism and long before the decline ofmMuslim political-economic power. It hopes to provide a counterfactual argument that shows that cosmopolitanism and pluralism were indeed part of daily political-economic life then, and that Indonesian Muslims were in fact able to live in such a cosmopolitan environment where pluralism was not regarded as a threat or a reason for mass-scale moral panic. The opposite was the case that when Muslim economic-political power was at its height in Java, Javanese Muslims were at their most accommodating and welcoming towards foreigners of diverse ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious backgrounds. In order to highlight such pluralism evidence, our reference will be the work of the writer Johann Theodorus de Bry, whose work Icones Indiae Orientalis was published in 1601.Keywords: Pluralism, Cosmopolitanism, Banten, Theodorus de Bry, Seventeenth Century

A new approach to measuring retail promotion effectiveness: A case of store traffic

This article presents an approach to measure the effect of promotions on customer traffic, a measure of effectiveness of retail promotions important both to managers and scholars. This effect is unobservable because one lacks baseline measures of traffic: one cannot measure traffic simultaneously with and without a promotion. Hence, the assessment of this effect remains a challenge. However, adoption of imaging and other forms of electronic monitoring allows retailers to collect traffic data, until recently unavailable, on the behavior of both actual and potential customers. Making these data useful for business decisions requires new analytical methods. The approach of this research is novel in two ways: First, a counterfactual argument is the foundation to predict the baseline series. Second, the approach defines predicted residuals to estimate hourly-specific effects on traffic, which one computes after the promotion. Computing the baseline predictions uses a Poisson model with effect-parameters such as time of the day, day of the week, week of the month, secular trends and others, to capture sources of systematic variability. The article illustrates the use of simple plots to visualize and communicate the evolution of the promotion effects. An illustration uses data from Skillup-Chile, an imaging and analytics company.

Voter Coordination and the Rise of the Republican Party: Evidence from New England

The development of the Republican Party is a significant event in American political history. While scholars describe its formation as a realignment caused by the slavery issue, this article reinterprets this perspective. Focusing on gubernatorial elections in New England from 1840 to the mid-1850s, I present evidence that the rise of the Republican Party in the region was due to a lack of strategic voting coupled with third-party, antislavery voting that did not consistently affect the Whigs across states. A counterfactual argument suggests that Whig elites would have sought to change the nature of party politics and, had the distribution of third-party voting affected the Whigs similarly across states, then the Republicans may not have formed. Thus, the distribution of antislavery, third-party voting was more important than the presence of antislavery sentiment. This finding is important for understanding American party development and how strategic voting fits into the study of US elections.

The Abolitionist Imagination by Andrew Delbanco (review)

Reviewed by: The Abolitionist Imagination by Andrew Delbanco Richard Newman (bio) The Abolitionist Imagination. By Andrew Delbanco. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012. Pp. 205. Cloth, $24.95.) Andrew Delbanco, the Mendelson Family Chair of American Studies at Columbia University and a contributor to the New York Review of Books, is a humanities hero whose work in the nineteenth-century literary and cultural landscape has admirers in both academic and public realms. Unfortunately, Delbanco’s brief on the abolitionist imagination offers a dated look at the men and women who struggled against slavery in the 1800s. The Abolitionist Imagination is actually several books in one. At the center, Delbanco offers a framing essay on abolitionism as not only a historical movement but a powerful example of that “recurrent American phenomenon”: zealous reformers whose radical protest shatters mainstream norms and institutions (3). Originally presented as part of the Alexis de Tocqueville Lectures on American Politics at Harvard University, Delbanco’s view of abolitionism pivots on a basic question. What happens, he wonders, when “a determined minority sets out, in the face of long odds, to rid the world of what it regards as a patent and entrenched evil” (3)? In the nineteenth century, according to Delbanco, reformers’ noble antislavery ends became fatally compromised by their radical means. Eschewing moderation, abolitionists pushed too hard. The result, even if abolitionists [End Page 407] were only indirectly responsible, was a deadly civil war. Indeed, as he puts it, “Abolitionism still compels us to ask what is, alas, a perennial question: How much blood for how much good?” (54). To be sure, Delbanco indicates that emancipation was worth almost any national sacrifice. Yet he registers lingering doubts. Veering off into contemporary debates over righteous violence endorsed by contemporary pro-life advocates, he intimates that abolitionism remains in many ways a negative symbol of radical reform. It may seem like a slippery slope, but Delbanco is not afraid to ride it. In addition to Delbanco’s essay on the abolitionist movement as a capacious reform vehicle in American history and memory, the book includes four commentaries by distinguished scholars and writers, as well as a final reply by Delbanco. The contributing essayists lurk behind Delbanco, offering a series of pointed challenges on issues ranging from evolving abolitionist tactics and strategies (which Delbanco ignores) to the critical importance of black abolitionists in nineteenth-century America (which he skims over too quickly). More than Delbanco, the contributing essayists provide fresh, lively, and cutting-edge perspectives. As John Stauffer and Manisha Sinha show, for instance, Delbanco ignores the essential fact that abolitionists tested a range of strategies during the early republic. As Stauffer notes, early abolitionists who favored moderate political and legal activism—precisely the type of careful reformers Delbanco longs for—failed to curb slavery’s massive expansion after 1800. That helps explain why new generations of black and white abolitionists embraced more radical measures. Moreover, as Sinha adds, abolitionists did not instigate the Civil War; a slaveholders counterrevolution, aimed at ever-more-robust protections of bondage, was more directly tied to sectional uprising. As for critiques of abolitionists, novelist and cultural critic Darryl Pinckney points out that many white reformers exhibited a none-too-subtle racism and paternalism. Yet, he makes clear, this should not detract from abolitionism’s broader intent: slaying the most economically lucrative and culturally powerful institution of human control in the Western world. One could raise other objections. On the subject of compensated emancipation as an alternative to war, to which Delbanco passingly refers, generations of American reformers floated this idea before slaveholders, who routinely rejected it. In The Confederate States of America (2005), Roger Ransom offers a counterfactual argument that compensated abolition in the South would have been costly but feasible. But American masters would not accept a world without bondage. Little wonder that many Unionists asserted that slaveholding had become a pathology by the 1860s. What [End Page 408] about the human costs of the Civil War? On this score, we might turn the question around. What about the costs of American nation-building? Was American growth, as abolitionists asked, worth the price of black blood? As Joshua Rothman has recently shown...

Counterfactuals and unphysical ceteris paribus: An explanatory fallacy

I reconsider a type of counterfactual argument often used in historical sciences on a recent widely discussed example of the so-called ?rare Earth? hypothesis in planetary sciences and astrobiology. The argument is based on the alleged ?rarity? of some crucial ingredient for the planetary habitability, which is, in Earth?s case, provided by contingent evolutionary development. For instance, the claim that a contingent fact of history which has created planet Jupiter enables shielding of Earth from most dangerous impact catastrophes, thus increasing Earth?s habitability, leads often to the conclusion that such state-of-affairs must be rare in the Galaxy. I argue that this reasoning is deeply flawed, for several closely related reasons. In addition, the relevance of the philosophical problem of transworld identity for this kind of historical reasoning in science is put forward. This highlights many explanatory problems one faces when using historical counterfactuals in study of complex, nonlinear dynamical systems - and bolsters the relevance of philosophy for evaluation of scientific explanatory claims.

Quantum Counterfactuals and Locality

Stapp's counterfactual argument for quantum nonlocality based upon a Hardy entangled state is shown to be flawed. While he has correctly analyzed a particular framework using the method of consistent histories, there are alternative frameworks which do not support his argument. The framework dependence of quantum counterfactual arguments, with analogs in classical counterfactuals, vitiates the claim that nonlocal (superluminal) influences exist in the quantum world. Instead it shows that counterfactual arguments are of limited use for analyzing these questions.

Invalid Permutation Tests

Permutation tests are often presented in a rather casual manner, in both introductory and advanced statistics textbooks. The appeal of the cleverness of the procedure seems to replace the need for a rigorous argument that it produces valid hypothesis tests. The consequence of this educational failing has been a widespread belief in a “permutation principle”, which is supposed invariably to give tests that are valid by construction, under an absolute minimum of statistical assumptions. Several lines of argument are presented here to show that the permutation principle itself can be invalid, concentrating on the Fisher‐Pitman permutation test for two means. A simple counterfactual example illustrates the general problem, and a slightly more elaborate counterfactual argument is used to explain why the main mathematical proof of the validity of permutation tests is mistaken. Two modifications of the permutation test are suggested to be valid in a very modest simulation. In instances where simulation software is readily available, investigating the validity of a specific permutation test can be done easily, requiring only a minimum understanding of statistical technicalities.

1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East (review)

Reviewed by: 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East Doron Shultziner 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East, by Tom Segev, translated by Jessica Cohen. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007. 673 pp. $35.00. The "Six Day War," as Israel coined it in 1967, constituted a major transformative event in the history of Israel and the Middle East at large. Tom Segev's book about this war provides an up-to-date historical account of the Israeli domestic setting before the war, the political dynamics leading to and through the war, and the new realities and dilemmas following the war. The book makes important contributions to the history of the war, but these contributions are somewhat handicapped by three main problems. First, the book spans almost six hundred pages, excluding footnotes. The writing is journalistic in style, relying heavily upon direct quotes, which often makes the book feel like a very long newspaper article. The first third of the book provides exhaustingly long, mundane, and redundant details of ordinary life in 1966, drawn from letters and diaries, which is likely to deter some readers. Second, Segev makes far-reaching inferences from selected letters and newspaper articles, arguing that Israelis sank into what he describes as depression, solemn mood, bereavement, distress, sense of helplessness, and similar [End Page 199] cognitive attributes. These generalizations often seem overstated and exaggerated in order to justify the incorporation of the first part of the book. Most of the social problems that Segev notes had been constant characteristics of Israeli politics and society since independence. Segev explains that on top of these, Israel also experienced special problems from 1966 until the war, such as an economic recession (following years of prosperity), and the relatively high emigration rate from Israel, but he fails to demonstrate that these factors fed into the general national mood of depression and distress that he reconstructs. Third and more important, even if one does accept that a widespread psychological depression was building up among the Israeli public in the weeks prior to the war, Segev still does not demonstrate a causal mechanism between these factors and the natural panic that hit the Israeli public after Nasser's threats suddenly turned into action. Segev simply reiterates that "[i]t was not Nasser's threats that had brought this [panic] about—or, at least, not only his threats—but the quicksand of depression that pulled so many people down for so many months" (p. 286). But it remains unclear exactly how and why this prior national depression (if it existed) was a necessary condition for the war. By way of counterfactual argument, it is simply hard to envision that Israelis would have reacted differently even if all the known problems that Segev mentions were absent. Unfortunately, Segev does not differentiate between sentiments pertaining to these larger social factors and the mass panic that ensued after Nasser's moves. Indeed, these factors are largely forgotten when the book begins discussing the political dynamics that led to war following the Samoa operation (Chapter 3) and especially the border escalation with Syria (Chapter 4). It is here that Segev makes a greater contribution by providing updated records of Israeli government meetings that were not previously published. These include secret communications with King Hussein and Palestinian leaders; power and prestige struggles between Israeli Defense Force generals and Government Ministers, especially with PM Levi Eshkol; and complicated relations with the Johnson administration and the anticipation for a green light from the U.S. to initiate the preemptive strike on Egypt. Segev extensively surveyed primary resources and uncovered important documents that provide new details of the background calculations and especially the emotions running in the hearts and minds (and often egos) of the Israeli protagonists. The book also makes a contribution to understanding Israeli political psychology. The public panic and fear of a second Holocaust following Nasser's moves reveal a deep-seated cognitive map among many Jewish Israelis who are highly suspicious of the intentions of their Arab neighbors. [End Page 200] Segev also details the irrational reactions to Nasser's moves. Many Israelis yearned to replace uncharismatic PM...

The Corrective Effect of Ministerial Resignations on Government Popularity

Using data from the United Kingdom, we estimate the effects of ministerial resignation on government popularity. We test a counterfactual argument that resignations should have a corrective effect, that is, there is an increase in popularity following a resignation when taking into account the negative effect on popularity of the resignation issue. We get empirical estimates by using the age of ministers involved in resignation issues as an instrument. Our IV estimates provide empirical support for the corrective effect.

The Corrective Effect of Ministerial Resignations on Government Popularity

Using data from the United Kingdom, we estimate the effects of ministerial resignation on government popularity. We test a counterfactual argument that resignations should have a corrective effect, that is, there is an increase in popularity following a resignation when taking into account the negative effect on popularity of the resignation issue. We get empirical estimates by using the age of ministers involved in resignation issues as an instrument. Our IV estimates provide empirical support for the corrective effect.

The Counterfactual Method of Marx's Theory of Surplus

The aim of this paper is to show that Marx supports his theory of surplus value by developing a counterfactual argument, that is, by comparing the 'normal' state of a capitalist economy against a hypothetical state in which no surplus is produced. Marx then divides his analysis of value into three successive steps. The first deals with the production of new value in the sphere of production; the second with the process of creation of surplus value, both in the sphere of production and in the sphere of circulation; and the third with the process of equalisation of the rate of profit, which is accomplished via capitalist competition in the sphere of circulation. The paper proposes a formalisation of the three-step analysis and of the counterfactual argument. Marx's three-step analysis is shown to be a scientific analysis of the hidden connections between social relations (expressed in labour flows) and commodity exchange; thus it is not a useless detour.

A Lockean Argument for Black Reparations

This is a defense of blackreparations using the theory of reparations setout in John Locke's The Second Treatise ofGovernment. I develop two mainarguments, what I call the ``inheritanceargument'' and the ``counterfactual argument,''both of which have been thought to fail. In nocase do I appeal to the false ideas that presentday United States citizens are guilty ofslavery or must pay reparation simply becausethe U.S. Government was once complicit in thecrime.