Counterfactual Preservation Checklist¶
Checklist — instantiates Minimal-Change Counterfactual Construction
Walks every independent actual fact and confirms it is held fixed in the counterfactual unless the antecedent genuinely forces it to change.
The Counterfactual Preservation Checklist is a disciplined, item-by-item walk through the actual facts, certifying that each one is carried unchanged into the counterfactual world unless the antecedent truly forces it to move. Its defining orientation is positive: it is a list of what must be kept. It defaults every independent fact to "preserved" and requires an explicit reason to release any of them, producing a signed-off preservation set that later steps can rely on. It deliberately does not decide whether a given fact is entailed to change — it flags such candidates and refers them out — and it does not interrogate the changes that were made. Its output is a certified inventory of held-fixed facts, so no one can later win an argument by quietly assuming a background fact also happened to differ.
Example¶
A historian constructs the well-worn counterfactual "if the ground at Waterloo had been dry, would Napoleon have won?" The antecedent edits exactly one fact: the overnight rain that left the field muddy is replaced with dry ground. The historian then opens a Counterfactual Preservation Checklist and walks every other established fact of the day. Relative army sizes: does dry ground force these to differ? No — preserve. Wellington's chosen defensive position along the ridge: not forced — preserve. The Prussian army's march toward the field: their movement was not gated on that rain in the same way, so it is not forced to change — preserve. The morning's attack timing might be pushed earlier by firmer ground, so that item is flagged "possibly entailed" and referred to the entailment audit rather than decided here. The checklist's output is an explicit list of facts marked "held fixed" — which is exactly what stops a later argument from quietly assuming the Prussians also failed to arrive.
How it works¶
- Pull the fact inventory. Take every independent actual fact from the baseline and list it.
- Default to preserve. Each fact starts marked "held fixed"; the burden is on any proposal to release it.
- Refer forced-change candidates out. A fact the antecedent might force to differ is flagged "possibly entailed" and sent to the entailment audit — the checklist does not adjudicate entailment itself.
- Require a stated reason to release. No fact leaves the preserved set without an explicit, recorded warrant.
- Sign off the preservation set. Produce a certified list of held-fixed facts that downstream mechanisms treat as fixed inputs.
Tuning parameters¶
- Default stance — preserve-by-default versus neutral. A strong preserve default is what enforces minimality; a neutral default leaks changes.
- Fact granularity — how finely the inventory is split. Finer items catch subtle background shifts but lengthen the walk and risk fatigue.
- Release threshold — how strong a reason must be to stop preserving a fact. A high bar keeps the world tight; too high, and genuinely forced changes get wrongly held.
- Coverage requirement — whether every baseline fact must be checked or only outcome-relevant ones. Full coverage is safest but costly.
- Sign-off formality — whether the preserved set is merely noted or formally certified by a named reviewer. Formality raises accountability and effort together.
When it helps, and when it misleads¶
Its strength is that it operationalizes ceteris paribus — all else held equal — turning a vague promise to "keep the background the same" into a checked, signed list.[n1] That is what lets the antecedent do the explanatory work: if everything else is demonstrably fixed, any change in outcome is attributable to the edit rather than to unnoticed drift.
Its failure modes come in two flavors. Over-preservation holds fixed a fact the antecedent genuinely forces to change, producing an incoherent world the analyst then reasons from. Rubber-stamping runs the checklist as a formality, marking everything "preserved" without real scrutiny. The related misuse is selective preservation — quietly holding fixed exactly the facts that make the conclusion convenient while releasing the inconvenient ones. The guarding discipline is to preserve by default but route every "must this change?" question to the entailment audit, and to demand a written warrant for each release so selective preservation cannot hide.
How it implements the components¶
preservation_set— its direct output: the explicit, signed-off set of facts certified as held fixed in the counterfactual.actual_fact_baseline— it instantiates the baseline as its line items, walking each actual fact and certifying its value is carried unchanged into the alternative world.
It certifies what is kept; it does not decide what is forced, nor attack what was changed. The entailment_cascade_map that determines whether a flagged fact must change is produced by Entailment Cascade Audit, and the gratuitous_change_filter that strikes unjustified changes belongs to its nearest relative, Gratuitous Change Challenge — the Checklist confirms the facts held fixed, the Challenge interrogates the changes made.
Related¶
- Instantiates: Minimal-Change Counterfactual Construction — the Checklist produces the certified preservation set that keeps the counterfactual minimal.
- Consumes: Actual Fact Ledger supplies the fact inventory the checklist walks.
- Sibling mechanisms: Gratuitous Change Challenge · Entailment Cascade Audit · Antecedent Edit Card · Actual Fact Ledger · Minimal-Difference Matrix
Editorial Notes¶
Form Classification¶
Form family: Assessment, Review & Assurance
Rationale: The checklist reviews every independent actual fact, requires a warrant for release, refers possible entailments, and certifies the held-fixed set, so its operative form is preservation assurance.
Nearest alternative: Representation, Specification & Plan — The final list is a persistent specification for downstream work, but the mechanism's defining act is verifying which facts may legitimately remain fixed.
Review outcome: Adjudicated after independent review; high confidence.
Origin Attribution¶
Primary origin: Philosophy
Origin pattern: Single lineage
Present-day reach: Multi-domain
Rationale: Counterfactual semantics cohered preservation of background facts except where the changed antecedent entails their alteration.
Related originating lineages:
- Law & Governance — Legal but-for reasoning operationalizes explicit held-constant facts when constructing causal alternatives.
Review resolution: Both reviewers identify philosophical counterfactual semantics as primary. Legal but-for analysis is a formative operational lineage, while the checklist packaging is an encyclopedia synthesis used across domains rather than literally universal in provenance.
Encyclopedia synthesis: The exact catalogued form synthesizes established practice rather than reproducing a single standard historical label.
Review outcome: Reconciled after independent review; high confidence.
Notes¶
[n1] Ceteris paribus — "other things being equal" — is the methodological convention of holding background conditions fixed while varying one factor, so that any change in the result can be pinned on that factor. The checklist is what makes the clause enforceable rather than rhetorical. ↩