Non-strict Interventionism: The Case Of Right-Nested Counterfactuals

Katrin Schulz, Sonja Smets, Fernando R. Velázquez-Quesada, Kaibo Xie

Abstract: The paper focuses on a recent challenge brought forward against the interventionist approach to the meaning of counterfactual conditionals. According to this objection, interventionism cannot account for the interpretation of right-nested counterfactuals, the problem being its strict interventionism. We will report on the results of an empirical study supporting the objection. Furthermore, we will extend the well-known logic of intervention with a new operator expressing an alternative notion of intervention that does away with strict interventionism (and thus can account for some critical examples). This new notion of intervention operates on the valuation of the variables in a causal model, and not on their functional dependencies.