The Relationship between Causal and Counterfactual Reasoning

In this paper it is claimed that counterfactual reasoning in contextualized situations depends on and reflects causal contingencies, which are actualized depending on the task demand. The experiments presented manipulated some elements of the pragmatics of a task to show cases where dissociation between causal and counterfactual reasoning does or does not occur. Based on this evidence, it is claimed that Judgement Dissociation Theory (Mandel, 2003b) does not adequately characterize the link between causal and counterfactual reasoning. Results are discussed in terms of the pragmatics associated with causal queries.