Which Counterfactuals Matter? A Response to Beck

In our article (Weisberg & Gopnik, 2013), we construct a unifying theory of imaginative processes, in which counterfactuals and pretend games share an underlying cognitive capacity. This theory allows us to explain why children pretend, why they create fantastical pretend worlds, and how pretend play and counterfactual reasoning can help children to learn about the causal structure of reality. In her response, Beck draws a distinction between two types of counterfactuals: general counterfactuals and real-world counterfactuals. General counterfactuals are the broadest class of counterfactuals, encompassing hypothetical futures, fictional events, and pretend games. Real-world counterfactuals are a subset of general counterfactuals, and they are defined by their relationship to the real world: They represent specific alternatives to events that actually happened, or minor modifications to specific elements of reality. We agree with Beck that the class of counterfactuals is broad and that not all types of counterfactuals share the same features. But we wish to add further nuance to this argument by pointing out that it may be difficult if not impossible to draw sharp lines between categories of counterfactuals, because the space of counterfactuals is continuous. Counterfactuals can differ from each other and from the real world along a wide variety of dimensions, and this creates an infinite number of possible worlds to contrast with any given state of the real world (Lewis, 2000). Even if we define real-world counterfactuals as those that are “closest” to the real world because they only change one or a very small set of real-world facts, it does not seem possible to determine where the boundaries of this category are. At what point do real-world counterfactuals become dissimilar enough from reality that they cease to be real-world counterfactuals and become general counterfactuals? We believe that there is no straightforward answer to this question, highlighting the difficulty with drawing distinctions between types of counterfactuals.