Lexicon of Arguments

 

V 166
Nomic dependence/Lewis: two families of law propositions or individual fact p imply together all material conditionals between the two families.
>Conditionals.
Then the material conditionals are implied by the counterfactual conditionals which include the counterfactual dependence (conD).
>Counterfactual dependence.
The nomic dependence explains the counterfactual dependence.
Important argument: the law propositions and the fact propositions must be counterfactually independent.
Nomic dependence: is reversible.
Counterfactual dependence is irreversible - E.g. Barometer/pressure.
V 312f
Dependence hypothesis/Lewis: here: set of propositions (sets of possible worlds) which specify everything the (omniscient) actor knows about causal dependence and independence of his actions - they form a partition. - I.e. they do not overlap.
Expected benefits: Do not refer to individual dependency hypotheses. - ((s) i.e. it must not be assumed to be without alternative.) - You have to spread your beliefs on several dependencies.)
Benefit: to be understood as a non-conditional belief of a variation K of an alternative dependence hypothesis.
When options and dependency hypotheses differ, the difference shows the aspect which brings the novelty.
>Benefit.
Wrong: wanting to maximize the expected benefits to any partition - This would lead to different answers for different partitions - the partition for propositions of the value level would tell us fatalistically that all options are equally good.
>Proposition.
V 320
Dependence hypothesis/illustration/probability distribution/Lewis: If the same dependence applies in several worlds, the images represent the worlds in the same way. - If the images are the same, we have equivalence classes. - Then we have the partition of these equivalence classes.
>Possible world/Lewis, >Equivalence class.