Counterfactuals: Paths of the Might have Been

New
Paperback
2019
$28.03

What are counterfactuals and what is their point? In many cases, none at all. It may be true that if kangaroos didn't have tails, they would fall over, but they do have tails and if they didn't they wouldn't be kangaroos (or would they?). This is the sort of thing that can give counterfactuals a bad name, as inhabitants of a La La Land of the mind. On the other hand, counterfactuals do useful service across a broad range of disciplines in both the sciences and the humanities, including philosophy, history, cosmology, biology, cognitive psychology, jurisprudence, economics, art history, literary theory. They are also richly, albeit sometimes treacherously, present in the everyday human realm of how our lives are both imagined and lived: in the `crossroads' scenario of decision-making, the place of regret in retrospective assessments of paths taken and not taken, and, at the outer limit, as the wish not to have been born. Christopher Prendergast take us on a dizzying exploratory journey through some of these intellectual and human landscapes, mobilizing a wide range of reference from antiquity to the present, and sustained by the belief that, whether as help or hindrance, and with many variations across cultures, counterfactual thinking and imagining are fundamental to what it is to be human.

Synopsis

What are counterfactuals and what is their point? In many cases, none at all. It may be true that if kangaroos didn't have tails, they would fall over, but they do have tails and if they didn't they wouldn't be kangaroos (or would they?). This is the sort of thing that can give counterfactuals a bad name, as inhabitants of a La La Land of the mind. On the other hand, counterfactuals do useful service across a broad range of disciplines in both the sciences and the humanities, including philosophy, history, cosmology, biology, cognitive psychology, jurisprudence, economics, art history, literary theory. They are also richly, albeit sometimes treacherously, present in the everyday human realm of how our lives are both imagined and lived: in the `crossroads' scenario of decision-making, the place of regret in retrospective assessments of paths taken and not taken, and, at the outer limit, as the wish not to have been born. Christopher Prendergast take us on a dizzying exploratory journey through some of these intellectual and human landscapes, mobilizing a wide range of reference from antiquity to the present, and sustained by the belief that, whether as help or hindrance, and with many variations across cultures, counterfactual thinking and imagining are fundamental to what it is to be human.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 272
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: 21 Feb 2019
ISBN 10: 1350090093
ISBN 13: 9781350090095
Book Overview: We all use counterfactuals whether we are aware of it or not. But what are they? Counterfactuals introduces and explores both the history of the idea and contemporary use of counterfactuals in our everyday lives.

Media Reviews

Christopher Prendergast's wide-ranging and philosophically informed investigation of counterfactuals is a revelation. Counterfactual conjectures, we learn, wend their way through centuries of Western thought on numerous topics: the vagaries of chance, the mysteries of time, and the fragility of personal identity. They link metaphysical speculation to utopian longing and the pain of personal regret. Prendergast's encounters with them reveal both their ubiquity and their strangeness. -- Catherine Gallagher, Emerita Eggers Professor of English Literature, University of California Berkeley, USA
Prendergast uses the rich idea of counterfactuals as a point of departure for a deft exploration of key works of literature and philosophy. This is an intellectually adventurous and highly stimulating book. -- Andrew Huddleston, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Birkbeck, University of London, UK

Author Bio

Christopher Prendergast is Professor Emeritus in French, University of Cambridge, UK, Honorary Professor, University of Copenhagen, Denmark and fellow of the British Academy. He is is the general editor of the Penguin translation of Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu, co-editor of World Reader, an anthology of world literature. He writes for the LRB, The Independent, The New York Review of Books and The New Left Review.