𝌎:Counterfactuals

Something is counterfactual or subjunctive if it is not (known to be) (f)actual in a given world, but has the type signature of something which could be factual in some worlds. For instance, one can speak of counterfactual Everett branches (entangled with counterfactual measurement outcomes) which have decohered from a given observer state. In linguistics, counterfactuals are expressed by irrealis moods.

┌───────────── COUNTERFACTUAL TOPOLOGY ANALYZER ─────────────────┐
│ Mapping Possible vs Actual States                           │
│━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━│
│                                                            │
│ Type Signature Analysis:                                   │
│ ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────┐        │
│ │ Actual     ┌───┐                               │        │
│ │ World:     │ F │ Factual State                 │        │
│ │            └─┬─┘                               │        │
│ │              │                                 │        │
│ │              │   ┌───┐  ┌───┐  ┌───┐          │        │
│ │              └───┤CF1│  │CF2│  │CF3│          │        │
│ │         Counterfactual└───┘  └───┘  States    │        │
│ └────────────────────────────────────────────────┘        │
│                                                            │
│ Everett Branch Decoherence:                               │
│ ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────┐        │
│ │    Measurement                                 │        │
│ │        │                                       │        │
│ │    ┌───┴───┐                                  │        │
│ │    │   ψ   │ Quantum State                    │        │
│ │    └───┬───┘                                  │        │
│ │     ╱   │   ╲                                 │        │
│ │ ψ₁⟩    ψ₂⟩   ψ₃⟩  Branching                   │        │
│ │                                               │        │
│ │ Actual   Counterfactual   Counterfactual     │        │
│ └────────────────────────────────────────────────┘        │
│                                                            │
│ Linguistic Expression:                                     │
│ ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────┐        │
│ │ Realis:     "It is raining"                    │        │
│ │             ↓                                  │        │
│ │ Irrealis:   "If it were raining..."           │        │
│ │             "It might have rained"             │        │
│ │             "I wish it would rain"             │        │
│ └────────────────────────────────────────────────┘        │
│                                                            │
│ Possibility Space:                                         │
│ ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────┐        │
│ │ Actual    [■] Type-Valid                       │        │
│ │ Possible  [□] World-Compatible                 │        │
│ │ Invalid   [×] Type-Invalid                     │        │
│ │                                               │        │
│ │     ■───□───□   Valid Paths                   │        │
│ │     │   │   │                                 │        │
│ │     □───□───×   Mixed Paths                   │        │
│ │     │   │   │                                 │        │
│ │     □───×───×   Invalid Paths                 │        │
│ └────────────────────────────────────────────────┘        │
│                                                            │
│ [Map Possibilities] [Analyze Type] [Check Validity]        │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

related

• irrealis
• mu-op