2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Ratio (new series) XXVII 3 September 2014 0034-0006

A LEWISIAN TRILEMMA
H. Orri Stefnsson
Abstract
According to one reading of the thesis of Humean Supervenience,
most famously defended by David Lewis, certain fundamental
(non-modal) facts entail all there is but do not supervene on less
fundamental facts. However, in this paper I prove that it follows
from Lewis possible world semantics for counterfactuals, in particular his Centring condition, that all non-modal facts supervene
on counterfactuals. Humeans could respond to this result by either
giving up Centring or abandoning the idea that the most fundamental facts do not supervene on less fundamental facts. I argue
that either response should in general be acceptable to Humeans:
the first since there is nothing particularly Humean about Centring; the latter since Humeans should, independently of the result
I present, be sceptical that the supervenience of one fact upon
another by itself says anything about fundamentality.1

According to the Humean Supervenience thesis, most famously

articulated and defended by David Lewis,2 counterfactuals (and
other modal facts) supervene on certain non-modal facts. In other
words, if two worlds3 differ in what counterfactuals are true at
them then they must differ in non-modal facts. A question that has
not received much attention is whether the supervenience relation holds in the other direction. That is, if two worlds differ in
non-modal facts, must they also differ in counterfactuals? Not
according to a strong reading of Lewis Humean Supervenience
thesis. For on this view, certain non-modal facts facts about
the spatiotemporal arrangement of local qualities4 are more
1
I would like to thank Richard Bradley, Roman Frigg, Alan Hjek, Moritz Schulz and
Brian Weatherson for helpful discussions about the topic of this paper. An earlier version
was presented at the Second Reasoning Club Conference in Pisa. I am grateful to the
audience for useful questions and suggestions. Finally, I thank a referee for Ratio for very
helpful suggestions.
2
See e.g. David Lewis, Introduction, in Philosophical Papers, vol. 2, (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1987) and Lewis, Humean supervenience debugged, Mind, 103 (1994),
pp. 473490.
3
Strictly speaking, two worlds like ours. (See section 1 below.)
4
Lewis, Humean Supervenience Debugged, p. 474.

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fundamental than other types of facts and do not supervene

on any less fundamental facts.5 Hence, on this view, two worlds
might differ in the spatiotemporal arrangement of local qualities
without differing in counterfactuals.
Below I prove that Lewis classical semantical system for
counterfactuals,6 in particular his Centring condition, entails
that non-modal facts in general, and in particular facts about
spatiotemporal arrangements of local qualities, do supervene on
counterfactuals. Hence, Lewis and other Humeans are faced with
a trilemma: they must give up Centring, or accept that the most
fundamental facts do supervene on less fundamental facts, or
abandon the idea that certain non-modal facts are more fundamental than counterfactuals. The last route out of the trilemma
should not be appealing to Lewis and other committed Humeans,
since intrinsic to Humean metaphysics, as I understand the view,
is the thesis that certain non-modal facts are more fundamental
than modal facts like counterfactuals. But as I will try to show, the
other two routes should in general be acceptable to Humeans: the
first since there is nothing particularly Humean about Centring;
the second since Humeans (and, in fact, anyone) should, independently of the result I will present, be sceptical of any attempt to
build a (metaphysically significant) hierarchy of facts on the
supervenience relation.
1. Centring entails F-C Supervenience
Let us start with some notation and terminology. When proving that Centring entails that non-modal facts supervene on
counterfactuals, I will be working with sentences, but all I say can
be translated into talk of propositions. I usually refer to nonmodal facts simply as facts; adding the prefix only when the
context requires. Uppercase letters, A, B, etc., represent sentence
variables, and a counterfactual conditional connective or,
which I take for the present purposes to be the same thing, a
subjunctive conditional connective. A B thus represents a sentence like If kangaroos had no tails they would topple over to
use one of Lewis famous examples. Like Lewis, I will take
5
As we will see, this is probably not how Lewis intended his Humean supervenience
thesis to be understood.
6
David Lewis, Counterfactuals (Oxford Blackwell, 2001 [1973]).

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counterfactual conditionals to be defined by their truth conditions, which given the truth conditions I discuss leaves room for
the possibility of counterfactuals with true antecedents. & stands
for the conjunction operator and material implication.
A-world is shorthand for world where A is true.
In general, we say that a property, fact, relation, etc. supervenes on just in case indiscernibility with respect to implies
indiscernibility with respect to ; or, contrapositively: supervenes on just in case a difference in implies a difference in .
The supervenience relation that I derive from Lewis semantics is
a relation between facts and counterfactuals. In particular, I will
prove that Lewis semantical Centring condition implies that facts
supervene on counterfactuals, which means that a difference in
facts implies a difference in counterfactuals. I will call this particular instance of supervenience F-C supervenience. To prove that
Centring implies F-C supervenience I however need to formalise
supervenience as a relation between sets of sentences (or propositions). So more formally, the relation that follows from Centring
is the following:
F-C supervenience Facts supervene on counterfactuals if it is
impossible that two worlds differ in what factual sentences are
true at them without differing in what counterfactual sentences
are true at them.
This relation differs from Lewis Humean Supervenience relation not only in direction but also in strength. Lewis famously took
the supervenience of counterfactuals on facts to be a contingent
matter; a property of our world, and worlds like ours, but not
necessarily a property of all possible worlds.7 I will however prove
that if Centring is a logical truth, thus holding at all logically
possible worlds, then F-C supervenience is a characteristic of all
logically possible worlds.
Informally stated, Lewis semantic Centring condition, shared
e.g. by Robert Stalnakers possible world semantics for conditionals,8 states that for any possible world wi, no world wj wi is as
similar to wi as wi is to itself. Centring has certain immediate
logical implications when combined with Lewis truth conditions
for counterfactuals:
7

Lewis, Introduction.
Robert Stalnaker, A theory of conditionals, in Nicholas Rescher (ed.), Studies in
Logical Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1968).
8

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Lewis truth conditions A B is non-vacuously true at world wj

if and only if among the A-worlds accessible from wj there is
some world wk such that B is true at wk and no world wl, equally
or more similar to wj than wk is to wj, such that B is false at wl.
A B is vacuously true at world wj if A is false at all worlds
accessible from wj (in which case A is impossible at wj).
Now since Centring implies that if A is true at wj then wj is the
A-world most similar to wj, Lewis truth conditions and Centring
together entail that if both A and B are true at wj, then so is the
counterfactual A B; but if A is true at wj but B is false, then the
counterfactual A B is false at wj.
The principles we just derived from Lewis semantics are
respectively known as Strong Centring (SC) and Weak Centring
(WC).9 More formally these principles state that:
Strong Centring For any sentences A, B: (A&B) (A B)
Weak Centring For any sentences A, B: (A&B) (A B)
To prove that Lewis semantics entails F-C supervenience it suffices to prove the following proposition:
Proposition SC and WC together entail F-S supervenience.
Proof. Let F denote the set of factual sentences that are true at
world wi (and suppose F is closed under conjunction). Let C
denote the set of counterfactual sentences true at wi. Suppose A,
B F. Then given SC, (A B) C. Now suppose we change the
truth value of B but leave the truth value of A unchanged; call the
new/changed world wi, let F denote the set of factual sentences
true at wi, and C the set of counterfactual sentences true at wi.
Then B F and (given bivalence) B F, but A F. Hence by
WC, (A B) C. Thus SC and WC together imply that if two
possible worlds differ in the truth value of some factual sentence,
then they also differ in the truth value of some counterfactual
sentence. In other words, facts supervene on counterfactuals.
9
WC can be derived from SC if we assume the counterfactual consistency principle
(CC) which states that (A B) (A B): Substituting B for B, SC states
(A&B) (A B) which by CC implies that (A&B) (A B). (On Lewis semantics, CC holds for all counterfactuals with possible antecedents.)

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2. Lewis Humean Metaphysics

Lewis did not, to my knowledge, explicitly deny that the
supervenience relation holds in the direction implied by his Centring condition. But this supervenience relation is certainly
inconsistent with one possible reading of Lewis (Humean) metaphysics. An important part of this metaphysical view is the aforementioned Humean Supervenience thesis (HS). Here is one of
Lewis few explicit statements of the thesis:
To begin with, we may be certain a priori that any contingent
truth whatever is made true, somehow, by the pattern of instantiation of fundamental properties and relations by particular
things . . . Humean Supervenience . . . says that in a world like
ours, the fundamental relations are exactly the spatiotemporal
relations. . . . And it says that in a world like ours, the fundamental properties are local qualities. . . . Therefore it says that
all else supervenes on the spatiotemporal arrangement of
local qualities throughout all of history, past and present and
future.10
So facts about the spatiotemporal arrangement of local qualities are, on this view, more fundamental than any other facts. And
since these facts are most fundamental, Lewis thought that all
else supervenes on them. Hence, in particular, counterfactuals
supervene on these fundamental (non-modal) facts. Many have
read Lewis as also holding the view that only the most fundamental
facts are such that all contingent truths supervene on them, which
implies, since supervenience is a transitive relation,11 that these
most fundamental facts do not supervene on any less fundamental
facts.12 This (mis)understanding of Lewis might stem from
his claim that a supervenience thesis is reductionist.13 For
reductionist programs usually consist in reducing less fundamental facts (or properties, relations, theories, etc.) to more

10

Lewis, Humean Supervenience Debugged, pp. 473474.

See e.g. Jaegwon Kim, Concepts of supervenience, Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research, 45 (1984), pp. 153176.
12
This seems to be how Robert Stalnaker understands Lewis metaphysics (see Varieties
of supervenience, Philosophical Perspectives 10 (1996), pp. 221242).
13
David Lewis, New work for a theory of universals, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61
(1983), pp. 343377.
11

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14

fundamental ones; and those facts to which all other facts can be
reduced are generally considered to be somehow more fundamental than other facts. Thus Lewis may seem to have been
defending the following claim:
Strong Humean Supervenience Facts about the spatiotemporal
arrangement of local qualities are more fundamental than
other facts (in particular modal facts) and all contingent truths
supervene on these facts, which do not supervene on any less
fundamental facts.
As the proof in last section establishes, however, Lewis
Centring condition implies that the spatiotemporal arrangement
of local qualities does supervene on counterfactuals. For each
such arrangement we can construct a sentence describing that
arrangement. But then changing such a sentence changes what
counterfactuals are true, which means that such arrangements
supervene on counterfactuals. (Moreover, given that all contingent truths supervene on the spatiotemporal arrangement of local
qualities, and since supervenience is a transitive relation, all contingent truths supervene on counterfactuals.) But that means that
Centring and the strong reading of HS together imply a contradiction: certain non-modal facts both are and are not more fundamental than counterfactuals. Hence, those who favour the
strong reading of HS must give up (at least Strong) Centring. In
next section I will argue that that is a way out of the Lewisian
trilemma that should in general be acceptable to Humeans, since
there is nothing Humean about Centring.
Another way out of the Lewisian trilemma is to simply accept
that counterfactuals are no less fundamental than non-modal
facts. But that is, I suspect, a solution that committed Humeans
will not be happy with, since intrinsic to the Humean Supervenience thesis is the idea that certain non-modal facts facts
about the spatiotemporal arrangement of local qualities are
more fundamental than any modal facts. A third way out of the
trilemma, and one that should be acceptable to Humeans, is to
abandon the idea that the most fundamental facts do not
14
The same cannot, strictly speaking, be said about supervenience theses, since
supervenience is a reflexive relation: everything supervenes on itself, but nothing can be
more fundamental than itself. But the thought might be that only if supervenes on can
B be more fundamental as ; which, given that the reductionist wants to reduce less
fundamental truths to more fundamental ones, makes supervenience a necessary condition
for such reduction.

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supervene on less fundamental facts. This requires giving up

Strong HS for a weaker version of the thesis:
Weak Humean Supervenience Facts about the spatiotemporal
arrangement of local qualities are more fundamental than
other facts and all contingent truths supervene on them.
Although some have read Lewis as endorsing the stronger thesis
his explicit statements of Humean Supervenience do actually only
commit him to the weaker thesis.15 Moreover, although claiming
that a supervenience thesis is a form of reductionism, he emphasised that it is a stripped-down form of reductionism, unencumbered
by . . . claims of ontological priority.16 So it seems Lewis only
endorsed the Weaker HS thesis. Nevertheless, other Humeans
might want to hold on to the Strong version of HS, and in section
3.1 I will suggest one possible way to do so while avoiding the
problem discussed above. In section 3.2 I will discuss reasons for
giving up strong HS independently of the result we saw above.17
15

In another of his few explicit statements of Humean Supervenience, Lewis says:

Humean supervenience . . . is the doctrine that all there is to the world is a vast mosaic
of local matters of particular fact, just one little thing and then another. . . . We have
geometry: a system of external relations of spatiotemporal distance between points.
Maybe points of spacetime itself, maybe point-sized bits of matter or aether or fields,
maybe both. And at those points we have local qualities: perfectly natural intrinsic
properties which need nothing bigger than a point at which to be instantiated. For
short: we have an arrangement of qualities. And that is all. There is no difference
without difference in the arrangement of qualities. All else supervenes on that (Introduction, pp. ixx).

As should be evident, this description of HS only commits Lewis to the weaker of the HS
theses.
16
David Lewis, New work for a theory of universals, p. 358 (italics added).
17
It may be worth pointing out that it is not obvious that Lewis semantics for
counterfactuals is compatible with even weak HS. In particular, his semantics may seem
inconsistent with the view that truths about counterfactuals (at a particular world) supervene
on the non-modal facts (of that world). What counterfactuals are true at a world wi,
according to Lewis truth conditions for counterfactuals, depends not only on the facts of wi,
but also on the facts of worlds that are accessible from wi. In particular, assuming that A is true
at some world accessible from wi, then A B is true at wi if and only if B is true at all the
A-worlds that are minimally dissimilar from wi. But then supposing that A B is true at wi,
if we now change the truth value of B in one of these A-worlds that are minimally dissimilar
from wi, A B becomes false at wi. Hence, it seems, there can, given Lewis semantics for
counterfactuals, be a difference in counterfactuals true at a world without a difference in
what the (non-modal) facts are. But that means that counterfactuals do not supervene on
facts, contrary to the Humean Supervenience thesis Lewis explicitly endorses.
We can however easily avoid this conclusion, for instance by adding to the semantics
the constraint that worlds accessible from wi cannot change without some non-modal fact
of wi changing. Such a constraint is in particular plausible if we, unlike Lewis (see On the
Plurality of Worlds (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986)), take possible worlds to be simply sets of
sentences or propositions representing ways the actual world could have been. So it is not
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3. Humean Ways out of the Trilemma

Committed Humeans, who believe that certain non-modal facts
are more fundamental (in some important sense) than any modal
facts, can respond to the Lewisian trilemma in one of two ways:
they can either give up Centring, or abandon the idea that the
most fundamental truths do not supervene on less fundamental
truths (which is consistent with Weak but not Strong HS). I will
conclude this paper by considering (from a Humean perspective)
each of these routes out of the trilemma.
3.1 Giving up Centring
Lewis himself was fairly sure about the truth of Strong Centring,
providing as the main argument for its truth the following dialog:
You say: If Casper had come, it would have been a good party. . . . I
reply: Thats true; for he did come and it was a good party. The first
speaker in the dialog asserts a counterfactual, thinking that the
antecedent (and presumably the consequent) is false. The second
speaker, although disagreeing with the first speaker about the
actual facts i.e. about whether the party was good and whether
Casper was present confirms the truth of the conditional in
question by confirming the truth of both its antecedent and consequent. The naturalness of the above dialogue, Lewis suggested,
shows that in general we take the inference from A&B to A B
to be valid. In other words, ordinary reasoning satisfies Strong
Centring.18
Moreover, Lewis thought that the only thing that can be said
against Strong Centring involves confusing oddity with falsity. It is
often noted, when discussing SC, that it sounds very odd, to say
the least, to utter a counterfactual when the antecedent is not in
any way related to the consequent. And the fact that both antecedent and consequent are true does not change that. If grass
were green then the sky would be blue for instance sounds very
odd. But, Lewis pointed out, oddity is not falsity:
In fact, the oddity dazzles us. It blinds us to the truth value of
the sentences, and we can make no confident judgments one
the case that Lewis semantics is inconsistent with the Humean Supervenience thesis that he
explicitly endorsed. But his semantics for counterfactuals does not, by itself, imply the truth
of the thesis.
18
Lewis, Counterfactuals, pp. 2729.
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way or the other. We ordinarily take no interest in the truth

value of extreme oddities, so we cannot be expected to be good
at judging them. They prove nothing at all about truth
conditions.19
So the only argument that Lewis saw as potentially undermining Strong Centring proves nothing at all. Nevertheless, Lewis
admitted that he was surer about the truth of WC than SC, and
showed that by requiring that no world can be more similar to wi
than wi is to itself, rather than requiring that no world can be as
similar to wi as wi is to itself, then his semantics entails WC but not
SC.20 And WC by itself does not entail that facts supervene on
counterfactuals. Suppose that B is true at wi but no counterfactual
with a true antecedent and B as consequent is true at wi, as is
consistent with WC being true but SC false.21 Then changing the
truth value of B, but leaving the truth values of all other sentences
unchanged, will not necessarily change which counterfactuals are
true at wi. Hence, facts do not supervene on counterfactuals.22
One route Lewis could have taken out of the trilemma is thus to
give up Strong Centring. And that, I believe, is a way out of the
trilemma that should in general be acceptable to Humeans. For
there does not seem to be anything particularly Humean about
Strong Centring, if we understand Humean metaphysics as having
at its core the thesis that modal facts supervene on non-modal
ones. In fact, the combination of a particular Humean account
of chance and a particular Humean theory of counterfactuals
implies the failure of both Strong and Weak Centring. Suppose we
accept the Humean account of chance defended by Carl Hoefer,23
which agrees with Lewis view on chance in that chances

19

Lewis, Counterfactuals, p. 28.

Lewis, Counterfactuals, p. 29.
21
One way to make sense of this is to assume a probabilistic semantics like the one
discussed below, and suppose that that the truth of B was very unexpected, given everything
else that is true at wi.
22
It may be natural to think that for any tautology T and sentence A, A and T A are
logically equivalent, which would mean that facts supervene on counterfactuals. But
without Centring that is not the case. Still focusing on Lewis semantics but weakened such
that it does not imply Strong Centring, then although A is true in the actual world wi, there
might be a world wj such that: T is true at wj, wj is at least as similar to wi as wi is to itself, but
A is false at wj. Hence, if (Strong and/or Weak) Centring fails, then A might be true
but T A false.
23
Carl Hoefer, The third way on objective proabability: A sceptics guide to objective
chance, Mind, 116 (2007), pp. 549596.
20

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24

supervene on certain non-modal facts, but disagrees with Lewis

account in that Hoefer does not take the chance of an event e to
change to either 0 or 1 whenever e has already either occurred or
not. Hence, it might happen, given Hoefers Humean understanding of chance, that the chance of e is low even though e
actually occurs. Similarly, if E is a sentence describing the occurrence of e, then the chance of Es truth can be low even though E
actually turns out to be true. Now suppose that unlike Lewis, we
take counterfactuals to supervene on conditional chances. In particular, we take a counterfactual A B to be true at our world if
the conditional chance of B given A is sufficiently high.25 Then
given transitivity of the supervenience relation, counterfactuals
supervene on non-modal facts. Now these two views entail that it
might happen that A&B is true even though the conditional
chance of B given A is very high, meaning that A B is true
(and A B is false). Hence, we have two Humean views, one on
counterfactuals and the other on chance, that together imply the
failure of both Weak and Strong Centring.
To take an example, let A be a sentence expressing the proposition that a fair coin is (properly) tossed ten times in a row, and B
the proposition that the coin comes heads up on all tosses. Then
the conditional chance of B given A is greater than 0.999, which
means that given the above truth conditions for counterfactuals,
A B is true (increase the number of tosses if you like). It is
nevertheless possible that both A and B turn out to be true. But that
does not, given Hoefers Humean account of chance, change the
fact that the conditional chance of B given A is greater than 0.999.
Hence, it is possible that A&B and A B are simultaneously true,
thus violating both Strong and Weak Centring. Since these theories
of counterfactuals and chance are consistent with Humean metaphysics together satisfying the constraint that modal facts supervene on non-modal ones this suggests that there is nothing
particularly Humean about (either Strong or Weak) Centring.26
24
See e.g. David Lewis, A subjectivists guide to objective chance, in Richard Jeffrey
(ed.), Studies in Inductive Logic and Probability, vol. 2 (Berkeley CA: University of California
Press, 1980).
25
Hannes Leitgeb formulates a semantical system for counterfactuals that agrees with
Lewis in many ways, but is based on the above truth conditions for counterfactuals.
(Leitgeb, A probabilistic semantics for counterfactuals. Part A, The Review of Symbolic Logic
5 (2012), pp. 2684 and Leitgeb, A probabilistic semantics for counterfactuals. Part B, The
Review of Symbolic Logic 5 (2012), pp. 85121.)
26
Formally speaking we can relax Lewis semantics such that it does neither imply
Strong nor Weak Centring. The problem with weakening his (and Stalnakers) semantics

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Hence, giving up Centring is a route out of the trilemma that might

in general be attractive to Humeans.
Together with Hoefers theory of chance, we can see how
on the above semantics for counterfactuals, two worlds might
share all counterfactuals but nevertheless differ in non-modal
facts, which means that non-modal facts dont supervene on
counterfactuals. Before the coin is tossed ten times, there are 210
branches open to our world. To our surprise, the coin comes
heads up on all ten tosses. So B is true in the resulting world wi.
Now the worlds at the end of each of the 210 branches are exactly
like wi up to the coin toss, and differ only from wi with respect to
the truth of B. Call one of the worlds where B is false wj. Given the
above view on counterfactuals and chance, wi and wj agree on
the truth of all counterfactuals. For they only differ with respect to
the truth of B.
But this might seem strange. How can the fact that that the coin
comes up one way rather than another not make any difference to
what would be true in hypothetical situations?27 In world wi the
coin has a particular property, that of having come up heads on all
ten tosses (call the property c), which it fails to have in world wj.
Now take the sentence C which expresses the proposition that all
and only coins with property c have some property d. And suppose
that no coin in wj has neither property c nor d (increase the
number of tosses if this seems implausible.) Let D express the
proposition that there exists a coin with property d. Then it
intuitively seems that C D is true in wi but false in wj.
Given a probabilistic semantics for counterfactuals and
Hoefers account of chance, we can however explain why the
above intuition is mistaken. Recall that on the latter view, the past
as well as the future is chancy. When we consider what would be
true if C were, we should thus, according to the above view on
counterfactuals and chance, distribute chances equally over the
210 heads/tails-worlds. For each of these worlds are equally likely
so much that it no longer implies WC, however, is that it becomes much harder to maintain
that the similarity relation of Lewis semantics has anything to do with our intuitive
understanding of similarity, since we then must allow for the possibility that a world wj
might be more similar to wi than wi is to itself. Recall that to make Lewis semantics imply WC
but not SC we however only need to allow for the possibility that a world wj wi might be
as similar to wi as wi is to itself. We might make intuitive sense of the latter weakening by
assuming that certain similarities are irrelevant for the purposes of evaluating the truth of
counterfactuals. But it is hard to make the former weakening of Lewis semantics compatible with our intuitive understanding of similarity.
27
I thank a referee for Ratio for pressing me on this issue.
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conditional on C. (To put this in Lewisian terminology: all of

these 210 worlds are equally similar to the actual world as the actual
world is to itself.) But in less than 0.1% of these worlds is D true.
So given the semantics we are considering and Hoefers account
of chance, it is false in both wi and wj that had c-ness implied
d-ness, then there would exist a coin with property d.28
Many people will undoubtedly find the above implication too
unintuitive to be an acceptable cost of saving the Strong Humean
Supervenience thesis. But Humeans can at least take comfort in
knowing that there are semantical systems for counterfactuals that
are compatible with Humean metaphysics but imply, when combined with certain Humean theories of objective chance, that facts
dont supervene on counterfactuals.
3.2 Supervenience and Fundamentality
The other Humean way out of the trilemma, to abandon the idea
that the most fundamental facts do not supervene on less fundamental ones which is consistent with the Weak but not the
Strong version of the Humean Supervenience thesis might be
appealing to Humeans independently of the result we saw in
section 1. Going for Weak rather than Strong HS entails rejecting
the claim that if for some fact , we find that supervenes on
some fact (or collection of facts) that we do not consider to
be among the most fundamental facts, then cannot be among
the most fundamental facts either.29 But if we take the notion
of fundamentality to have great metaphysical significance, as
Humeans like Lewis seem to do, then we should already be sceptical of any view according to which the supervenience of fact
28
Morgenbesser cases raise a similar puzzle for the probabilistic theory of
counterfactuals (Michael A. Slote, Time in counterfactuals, The Philosophical Review 87
(1978), pp. 327, fn.33). Suppose that before the ten coin tosses, I offer you to bet on their
outcomes, which you decline. In world wi, it may seem true that if you had bet on the coin
coming heads up ten times in a row, then you would have won. But the same counterfactual is not
true in wj. Hence, it may seem, wi and wj differ in the truth value of at least one
counterfactual. But again we can, given the above theory of counterfactuals and chance,
explain why this intuition is mistaken: if this theory is true, then it is false in both wi and wj
that had you bet on the coin coming heads up on all tosses, then you would have won.
29
I should point out that even those who decide to go for weak rather than strong
Humean Supervenience must also either give up (at least Strong) Centring or accept
hyperintentionalism. For Strong and Weak Centring together imply that any factual sentence A is logically equivalent to the counterfactual (AvA) A. Thus any fundamental
fact is, given the two centring conditions, logically equivalent to a counterfactual. (I thank
Moritz Schulz for pointing this out.)

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H. ORRI STEFNSSON

upon has implications for how fundamental is. For

supervenience is quite a weak relation; arguably too weak for the
supervenience of upon to be sufficient to justify strong metaphysical claims, such as the claim that is no more fundamental
than . As Jaegwon Kim puts it: Supervenience . . . is not a deep
metaphysical relation; rather, it is a surface relation that reports
a pattern of property covariation.30 Hence, it is questionable
whether we should take the supervenience of one fact upon
another to have (on its own) deep metaphysical implications.
Modern metaphysicians will probably not be surprised to find
that we can, based on quite plausible assumptions, prove that
non-modal facts supervene on counterfactuals. For while it seems
plausible that non-modal facts are more fundamental than
counterfactuals, in some metaphysically important sense, many
metaphysicians have already noted that the supervenience
relation is not strong enough to sustain certain metaphysically
important distinctions, and have thus resorted to focusing of
grounding rather than supervenience.31 Lewis insistence that
supervenience theses are only stripped down versions of reductionism and free from metaphysical claims about ontological priority suggests that he also realised that the supervenience relation
is not strong enough to partition the set of facts into those that are
fundamental and those that are not. Thus it seems Lewis views on
metaphysics were perfectly consistent with his commitment to
Strong and Weak Centring.
4. Concluding Remarks
We have seen that those who accept a strong version of Lewis
Humean Supervenience thesis cannot accept Lewis semantics for
counterfactuals. And I have suggested two ways in which Humeans
could respond: one consisting in seeking a new semantics
for counterfactuals, the other consisting consisting in weakening
the supervenience thesis. This does not however establish that
Humean supervenience can ultimately be defended. We might for
30
Jaegwon Kim, Postscripts on supervenience, in Supervenience and Mind: Selected Philosophical Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 167.
31
See for instance Gideon Rosen, Metaphysical dependence: Grounding and reduction, in Bob Hale and Aviv Hoffmann (ed.), Modality: Metaphysics, Logic, and Epistemology
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), and Jonathan Schaffer, On what grounds what,
in David Chalmers, David Manley, Ryan Wasserman (ed.), Metametaphysics: New Essays on the
Foundations of Ontology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

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275

instance for empirical reasons have to give up even the Weak

Humean Supervenience thesis. In fact, many people have pointed
out that quantum physics seems to suggest that Humean
supervenience fails. Moreover, we might for metaphysical reasons
not discussed here have to give up HS. Troy Cross has for instance
recently argued that any property even any property Humeans
call fundamental is necessarily co-extensive with a unique disposition.32 So both HS theses that I have discussed might ultimately have to be rejected. But I hope to have shown how those
who favour the strong reading of HS can at least avoid the
problem I raised in this paper.
London School of Economics and Political Science
Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE
h.o.stefansson@lse.ac.uk

32
Troy Cross, Goodbye, Humean supervenience, Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 7 (2012),
pp. 129153. I thank a referee for Ratio for bringing Cross paper to my attention. A
Humean might, as Cross points out, avoid his conclusion by endorsing hyperintensional
distinctions. I will not try to evaluate here whether that is consistent with Humean
metaphysics.

2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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