Abstract: Counterpossible conditionals such as "If 5 + 7 were 13 I'd have got that sum right" are all vacuously true according to standard possible worlds semantics, yet there seem to be counterexamples to that thesis. The issue has significant implications for philosophical disputes in several areas. Recent attempts have been made to construct alternative semantic theories that allow for impossible worlds and falsify some counterpossibles. I will argue that such theories face systematic problems, and that the appearance of counterexamples to the standard semantics is an artifact of fallible heuristics used in evaluating conditionals.
Timothy Williamson is a Professor at the University of Oxford.
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