Local and global metrics for the semantics of counterfactual conditionals

Abstract

The semantics for counterfactual conditionals employs indexed relations ⁢a between possible worlds, with x >a y read intuitively as «x is closer to a than is y». This paper considers the question how far these different «closeness» relations of a model may be derived from a common source. Despite some well-known negative observations, we show that there is also quite a strong positive answer. Our main result is that for any model equiped with modular...