“Look Both Ways”: Counterfactuals in the Movies

This 2022 Netflix movie may deserve something more than its IMDb of 6.2, if only because it is perhaps the most extended counterfactual conditional movie of all time.

We all use counterfactual conditionals now and then. “If it weren’t for all the red lights, I would have been right on time.” What philosophers have been interested in, and sometimes confounded by, is what makes a given counterfactual true or false. Some are logically true “If the light had been green, it would not have been red.” Some aren’t, but still strike us as undeniable, “If the picture were taken in August, then Lake Champlain would not have been frozen.” Some we may be unsure about, as, perhaps, the punctuality claim had the lights been green.

An advantage of works of fiction is that they can run out the extended consequences of a “what if” without having to solve the problem of the truth conditions of counterfactuals in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. Instead, they simply exhibit a counterfactual world.

The most celebrated film with an extended counterfactual is “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The angel Clarence walks George Bailey through what should have been George’s beloved Bedford Falls, but is Pottersville on the contrafactual that George had never been born. For some doubts about the truth of the Pottersville counterfactual see Conjectures & Arguments, Philosophy & Law: “It's a Wonderful Life” -- the Metaphysics (lawrencecrocker.blogspot.com).

“Look Both Ways” takes us through the subsequent years had Lili Rhinehart’s Natalie not tested pregnancy positive after her graduation and a one-nighter with mere friend Gabe, played by Danny Ramirez. Then again, perhaps the counterfactual is what would have happened had Natalie actually tested positive.

A chief charm of the movie is that we never know which is the counterfactual - whether Natalie was pregnant or not. Her next four years are traced through on both scenarios with scrupulous impartiality.

(Technical aside: You can, if you like, think of the movie as showing two actual worlds of the Everett many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics sort. Take it to be a quantum event, going one way or the other, that produces two different Natalies going their different ways in different realities. The idea of grounding the truth of counterfactuals on these alternate worlds runs into the problem that there might be too many of them. Yet, there might also be too few. Perhaps there was no quantum event that would have led to that positive reading on the pregnancy tests if the results were negative in our world. The possible worlds that the philosopher David Lewis used to analyze counterfactuals have no such limitations. They fill logical space. Their problem is whether there is ever a unique "nearest possible world" as Lewis's analysis requires.)

We suspect early on that in one way of another, Natalie, though taking very different life paths, is going to end up somewhere near the same place. But will she, and, if so, in what ways similar and what not?

There is the butterfly effect on one side and Lachesis and her sister fates on the other. (Fatalism has it that no matter what Oedipus did, he was going to end up killing his father.) My view is that “Looking Both Ways” does not give the butterfly quite enough credit.

For other metaphysical movies, see: "Groundhog Day: The Movie as Metaphysics": http://lawrencecrocker.blogspot.com/2014/06/groundhog-day-movie-as-metaphysics.html. 

"The Many World Metaphysics of "The Man in the High Castle." https://lawrencecrocker.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-many-world-metaphysics-of-man-in.html.

 "'Her' Computer Consciousness: Can an Artificial Intelligence Be in Love?": https://lawrencecrocker.blogspot.com/2018/10/her-computer-consciousness-can.html. 

“Russian Doll:” Time, Many Worlds, and Computer Simulations: Conjectures & Arguments, Philosophy & Law: Russian Doll: Time, Many Worlds, and Computer Simulations (lawrencecrocker.blogspot.com)

If your tastes run to movies and murder (and criminal law theory), see "Delores Claiborne" abandoned attempts and manufactured self defense:  http://lawrencecrocker.blogspot.com/2014/12/v-behaviorurldefaultvmlo.html.

Were the “12 Angry Men” Right?" http://lawrencecrocker.blogspot.com/2018/02/were-12-angry-men-right.html