Counterfactuals

I'm posting this at 7:42 at night.  I woke up this morning before 8:00.  Between these two times, thousands--even millions--of possible futures that could have happened have been rendered permanently impossible.  The word for one of these discarded futures is counterfactual--something that could have come about that did not, an alternate possible future that did not occur in actuality.  In just one 24 hour period, an incalculable number of counterfactuals will pass me by, as I constantly perform actions that exclude me from taking other courses of action and thus I displace millions of possible variations of the future.  Even slightly different futures are barred from existence with every action, event, and moment of time that elapses.

Imagine a game of chess.  In any given turn, a finite number of possible
moves are available to each player.  As each move is made, all of the
 other possible moves that were not selected become counterfactuals.

Counterfactuals serve as just one of many examples of how philosophical concepts interact with our everyday lives, whether we acknowledge them or not.  Christian theologians too toy with counterfactuals when they hypothesize about things like what life would be like had humans not fallen and Eden remained a terrestrial paradise, what would have happened if the Jews had collectively accepted Christ as their Messiah during his first advent, or if God could have redeemed humans through something other than Christ's death.  What if the people of Noah's day had repented and ceased to live in such extensive evil?  What if David had killed Saul when he had the chance?  Every time a Christian contemplates a question like these, he or she is dwelling on counterfactual realities.

Speculating about counterfactuals can be quite helpful for discovering the significance of events that did happen and thus avoided becoming counterfactuals themselves.  Counterfactuals about past events can never actually come about, but they can indeed provide clearer insight into actual events.  By thinking about what did not happen, we can have a greater understanding of what did.  We can apply this even by trying to glean information about ourselves by assessing our past decisions.

Every time you wonder about a future that did not come about or an option in a decision that you did not pursue, you are wondering about counterfactuals.  The very act of trying to decide between two or more courses of action involves weighing things that will become counterfactuals against one option that will become reality, although one does not necessarily know beforehand which option will become reality and which ones will remain hypothetical possibilities.  Every moment of our lives produces an incomprehensible quantity of counterfactuals--and this knowledge can drive us to make the best choices we can given our finite ability to predict and affect the future.

How many counterfactual choices do you pass by within a day?