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Inverse View
It is not the case that The standard account's conditional ('were it the only relevant feature') is never instantiated, since real cases always contain multiple features.
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Reasons For
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Reason for
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1.
Thought experiments regularly isolate variables in impossible conditions; this doesn't undermine their logical validity or philosophical use.
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2.
A conditional can be true and meaningful even if its antecedent is never actual—counterfactuals routinely describe what would happen if things differed.
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3.
The standard account aims to analyze causal concepts abstractly; instantiation in real cases is unnecessary for a conceptual account's correctness.
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Reasons Against
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Reason against
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1.
Counterfactual conditionals require possible worlds; isolating single features creates logically impossible scenarios with no truth conditions.
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2.
Scientific explanation always involves multiple causal factors; artificially removing them violates how actual causation operates in nature.
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3.
If the conditional is never satisfied, attributing causal power via that conditional is vacuous and explanatorily useless.
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