Conditionals, Misc

Vann McGee (1985) presents a putative counterexample to modus ponens. After clarifying that McGee actually targets an epistemic version of such a principle, I show that, contrary to a view commonly held in the literature, assuming the material conditional as an interpretation of the natural language conditional “if … then …” does not dissolve the puzzle. Indeed, I provide a slightly modified version of McGee’s famous election scenario in which (1) the relevant features of the scenario are preserved and (2) (...) both (epistemic) modus ponens and modus tollens fail, even if we assume the material conditional. I go on to note that in the modified scenario (which I call “the restaurant scenario”) (epistemic) conjunction introduction does not hold. More specifically, I show that the restaurant scenario is actually a version of the lottery scenario Kyburg uses in his Lottery Paradox (Kyburg 1961). Two main conclusions ensue: first, we should expect a unified solution to both McGee’s puzzle and the Lottery Paradox. Second, under minimal assumptions, McGee shows that (epistemic) modus ponens fails, even for the material conditional. Both conclusions defy the existing accounts of McGee’s puzzle. (shrink)

The conventional wisdom about conditionals claims that (1) conditionals that have non-assertive acts in their consequents, such as commands and promises, are not plausibly interpreted as material implications; (2) the most promising hypothesis about these sentences is conditional-assertion theory, which explains a conditional as a conditional speech act, i.e., a performance of a speech act given the assumption of the antecedent. This hypothesis has far-reaching and revisionist consequences, because conditional speech acts are not synonymous with a proposition with truth conditions. (...) This paper argues against this prevalent view in two steps. First, it presents a battery of objections against conditional-assertion theory. Second, it argues that these examples can be convincingly interpreted as categorical assertions of material implications. (shrink)

Some cases show that counterfactual conditionals (‘counterfactuals’ for short) are inherently ambiguous, equivocating between forward-tracking and backtracking counterfactu- als. Elsewhere, I have proposed a causal modeling semantics, which takes this phenomenon to be generated by two kinds of causal manipulations. (Lee 2015; Lee 2016) In an important paper (Hiddleston 2005), Eric Hiddleston offers a different causal modeling semantics, which he claims to be able to explain away the inherent ambiguity of counterfactuals. In this paper, I discuss these two semantic treatments (...) and argue that my (bifurcated) semantics is theoretically more promising than Hiddleston’s (unified) semantics. (shrink)

Triviality results threaten plausible principles governing our credence in epistemic modal claims. This paper develops a new account of modal credence which avoids triviality. On the resulting theory, probabilities are assigned not to sets of worlds, but rather to sets of information state-world pairs. The theory avoids triviality by giving up the principle that rational credence is closed under conditionalization. A rational agent can become irrational by conditionalizing on new evidence. In place of conditionalization, the paper develops a new account (...) of updating: conditionalization with normalization. (shrink)

Russell’s role in the controversy about the paradoxes of material implication is usually presented as a tale of how even the greatest minds can fall prey of basic conceptual confusions. Quine accused him of making a silly mistake in Principia Mathematica. He interpreted ‘if-then’ as a version of ‘implies’ and called it material implication. Quine’s accusation is that this decision involved a use-mention fallacy because the antecedent and consequent of ‘if-then’ are used instead of being mentioned as the premise and (...) the conclusion of an implication relation. It was his opinion that the criticisms and alternatives to the material implication presented by C. I. Lewis and others would never be made in the first place if Russell simply called the Philonian construction ‘material conditional’ instead of ‘material implication’. Quine’s interpretation on the topic became hugely influential, if not universally accepted. This paper will present the following criticisms against this interpretation: (1) the notion of material implication does not involve a use-mention fallacy, since the components of ‘if-then’ are mentioned and not used; (2) Quine’s belief that the components of ‘if-then’ are used was motivated by a conditional-assertion view of conditionals that is widely controversial and faces numerous difficulties; (3) the Philonian construction remains paradoxical even if it is called ‘material conditional’; (4) the Philonian construction is more plausible when it is interpreted as a material implication. (shrink)

The material account of indicative conditionals states that indicative conditional sentences and the material implication have the same truth conditions. Many conditional logics are motivated by attempts to fix the counter-intuitive aspects associated with the material account. Some counter-intuitive instances of classical argumentative forms, e.g., strengthening of the antecedent, contraposition and conditional negation, are regarded as evidences that the material account is wrong and that classical logic should be rejected in favour of a new logic system in which these argumentative (...) forms are invalid. It is argued that these logical revisions are ad hoc, because those controversial argumentative forms are implied by other argumentative forms we want to keep. The removal of one brick from the logic wall implies additional revisions in order to prevent the remaining structure from falling apart, but since these revisions imply the removal of other parts of logic we want to maintain, they are unwarranted. At the very least, the usual approach in the analysis of putative counter-examples of argumentative forms must be seriously reconsidered. (shrink)

The material account of indicative conditionals faces a legion of counterexamples that are the bread and butter in any entry about the subject. For this reason, the material account is widely unpopular among conditional experts. I will argue that this consensus was not built on solid foundations, since these counterexamples are contextual fallacies. They ignore a basic tenet of semantics according to which when evaluating arguments for validity we need to maintain the context constant, otherwise any argumentative form can be (...) rendered invalid. If we maintain the context fixed, the counterexamples to the material account are disarmed. Throughout the paper I also consider the ramifications of this defence, make suggestions to prevent contextual fallacies, and anticipate some possible misunderstandings and objections. (shrink)

Moti Mizrahi (2013) presented a putative counterexample to Hypothetical Syllogism (HS) for indicative conditionals aiming to succeed where previous attempts to refute HS have failed. Lee Walters (2014a) objected that Mizrahi’s putative counterexample results from an inadequate analysis of conditionals with embedded modals, but advanced new putative counterexamples to HS for subjunctive conditionals that are supposed to bypass this issue (Walters, 2014a; 2014b). It is argued that Walter’s analysis of embedded modals is unnecessary to prevent Mizrahi’s putative counterexample, since the (...) example can be disarmed either as a fallacy of equivocation or as a contextual fallacy. Walters’s putative counterexamples to HS are also criticized as contextual fallacies. The conclusion is that neither Mizrahi nor Walters provided compelling reasons to reject HS. (shrink)

The material account claims that indicative conditionals are material. However, the conventional wisdom even among material account enthusiasts is that the material account cannot be extended to subjunctive conditionals. There are mainly three reasons that motivate this consensus: (1) the belief that if subjunctives were material, most subjunctive conditionals would be vacuously true, which is implausible; (2) its inconsistency with Adam pairs, which suggest that indicative and subjunctive conditionals have different truth conditions; and (3) the belief that it is an (...) inferior hypothesis compared to the possible world theories. I will argue against (1) that the counterintuitive aspects of vacuously true conditionals can be explained away in a uniform fashion, regardless of whether they are indicatives or subjunctives. I reinforce this assumption by showing that the positive arguments for the material account of indicatives are also intuitively valid for subjunctives. The point mentioned in (2) is resisted by explaining Adam pairs as logically equivalent conditionals that can be appropriate at different times, depending of the speaker’s epistemic situation. Finally, (3) is criticised by making the case that the possible world account faces insurmountable problems and that a full-blown material account of indicatives and subjunctives is overall a more elegant solution. (shrink)

The material account of indicative conditionals states that indicative conditional sentences and the material implication have the same truth conditions. Recently, Adam Rieger has carried out a survey of arguments in favour of the material account. In this paper, I extend this survey by presenting yet more arguments for the material account. On top of presenting more arguments, I also want to argue that it is plausible to extend the material account to subjunctive conditionals. For that reason, the arguments here (...) presented contain principles that hold for both indicative and subjunctive conditionals. Towards the end, I defend why there are good reasons to accept these new arguments and try to explain why similar arguments have been somewhat unpopular. (shrink)

According to the so-called ‘standard theory’ of conditions, the conditionship relation is converse, that is, if A is a sufficient condition for B, B is a necessary condition for A. This theory faces well-known counterexamples that appeal to both causal and other asymmetric considerations. I show that these counterexamples lose their plausibility once we clarify two key components of the standard theory: that to satisfy a condition is to instantiate a property, and that what is usually called ‘conditionship relation’ is (...) an inferential relation. Throughout the paper this way of interpreting the standard theory is compared favourably over an alternative interpretation that is outlined in causal terms, since it can be applied to all counterexamples without losing its intuitive appeal. (shrink)

The Equation (TE) states that the probability of A → B is the probability of B given A (Jeffrey, 1964: 702–703). Lewis has shown that the acceptance of TE implies that the probability of A → B is the probability of B, which is implausible: the probability of a conditional cannot plausibly be the same as the probability of its consequent, e.g., the probability that the match will light given that is struck is not intuitively the same as the probability (...) that it will light (Lewis, 1976: 299–300). Here I want to counter Lewis’ claim. My aim is to argue that: (1) (TE) doesn’t track the probability of A → B, but instead our willingness to employ it on a modus ponens; (2) the triviality result doesn’t strike us as implausible if our willingness to employ A → B on a modus ponens implies a similar result; (3) (TE) is still inadequate in this limited role given that some conditionals are only employable on a modus tollens or can’t be employed on a modus ponens; (4) (TE) does not have the logical significance that is usually attributed to it, since inferential disposition is a pragmatic phenomenon. (shrink)

There is almost a consensus among philosophers that indicative conditionals are not material. Their thought hinges on the idea that if conditionals were material, A → B could be vacuously true even if the truth of A would lead to the falsity of B. But since this consequence is implausible, the material account must be false. I will argue that this point of view is mistaken, since it is motivated by the grammatical form of conditional sentences and the symbols used (...) to represent their logical form, which misleadingly suggest an inferential direction from A to B. That conditional sentences mislead us into a directionality bias is a phenomenon that is well-documented in the literature about conditional reasoning. However, this directional appearance is deceptive and does not reflect the underlying truth conditions of conditional sentences. When this illusion is dispelled, we can recognise conditionals for what they are: material truth-functions. (shrink)

Akman (2017) argued that our logic textbooks should be burned, since they present a propositional analysis of necessary and sufficient conditions that leads to a contradiction. According to Akman, we should instead adopt a first-order analysis where conditions are interpreted as one-place predicates. I will argue that (1) Akman’s argument fails to show that the propositional analysis of conditions leads to a contradiction, since the negation of a conjunction is not a conjunction with negated conjuncts, but rather a disjunction with (...) negated disjuncts; (2) we can still infer a contradiction from the propositional analysis of conditions by negating two propositions individually and using them to form a conjunction that is contradictory; (3) Akman’s interpretation of the first-order analysis does not accurately represent most attributions of conditions; (4) a proper representation of most attributions of conditions in the first-order analysis also implies a contradiction; (5) the propositional and the first-order analysis of conditions imply a contradiction because they use the material conditional, but they can be formulated with other conditional connectives that prevent this consequence; (6) we should still maintain the material conditional in both analyses and explain away its counter-intuitive character as the result of an epistemic bias that favours intentional evidence over extensional evidence, and acceptability conditions and criteria of truth over truth conditions. (shrink)

Four intuitions are recurrent and influential in theories about conditionals: the Ramsey’s test, the Adams’ Thesis, the Equation, and the robustness requirement. For simplicity’s sake, I call these intuitions ‘the big four’. My aim is to show that: (1) the big four are interdependent; (2) they express our inferential dispositions to employ a conditional on a modus ponens; (3) the disposition to employ conditionals on a modus ponens doesn’t have the epistemic significance that is usually attributed to it, since the (...) acceptability or truth conditions of a conditional is not necessarily associated with its employability on a modus ponens. (shrink)

The standing tradition in theorizing about meaning, since at least Frege, identifies meaning with propositions, which are, or determine, the truth-conditions of a sentence in a context. But a recent trend has advocated a departure from this tradition: in particular, it has been argued that modal claims do not express standard propositional contents. This non-propositionalism has received different implementations in expressivist semantics and certain kinds of dynamic semantics. They maintain that the key aspect of interpretation of modal claims is the (...) characteristic dynamic effect they have on the context. I argue that pessimism about truth-conditions arises from an overly simplistic picture of content, context and their interaction. While I agree with the critics that an important aspect of modal meaning is the dynamic effect modals have on the context, I argue that they have mischaracterized the nature and the complexity of this effect. A more nuanced account of the interaction between modals and context shows that far from being incompatible with propositional meaning, the dynamic aspect of meaning is precisely what allows us to predict the correct propositional content of an utterance. (shrink)

Recently, there has been a shift away from traditional truth-conditional accounts of meaning towards non-truth-conditional ones, e.g., expressivism, relativism and certain forms of dynamic semantics. Fueling this trend is some puzzling behavior of modal discourse. One particularly surprising manifestation of such behavior is the alleged failure of some of the most entrenched classical rules of inference; viz., modus ponens and modus tollens. These revisionary, non-truth-conditional accounts tout these failures, and the alleged tension between the behavior of modal vocabulary and classical (...) logic, as data in support of their departure from tradition, since the revisionary semantics invalidate some of these patterns. I, instead, offer a semantics for modality with the resources to accommodate the puzzling data while preserving classical logic, thus affirming the tradition that modals express ordinary truth-conditional content. My account shows that the real lesson of the apparent counterexamples is not the one the critics draw, but rather one they missed: namely, that there are linguistic mechanisms, reflected in the logical form, that affect the interpretation of modal language in a context in a systematic and precise way, which have to be captured by any adequate semantic account of the interaction between discourse context and modal vocabulary. The semantic theory I develop specifies these mechanisms and captures precisely how they affect the interpretation of modals in a context, and do so in a way that both explains the appearance of the putative counterexamples and preserves classical logic. (shrink)

We show that each of three natural sets of assumptions about the conditional entails necessitarianism: that anything possible is necessary.

This paper presents a puzzle involving embedded attitude reports. We resolve the puzzle by arguing that attitude verbs take restricted readings: in some environments the denotation of attitude verbs can be restricted by a given proposition. For example, when these verbs are embedded in the consequent of a conditional, they can be restricted by the proposition expressed by the conditional’s antecedent. We formulate and motivate two conditions on the availability of verb restrictions: (i) a constraint that ties the content of (...) restrictions to the “dynamic effects” of sentential connectives and (ii) a constraint that limits the availability of restriction effects to present tense verbs with first-person subjects. However, we also present some cases that make trouble for these conditions, and outline some possible ways of modifying the view to account for the recalcitrant data. We conclude with a brief discussion of some of the connections between our semantics for attitude verbs and issues concerning epistemic modals and theories of knowledge. (shrink)

This paper has three main goals. First, to motivate a puzzle about how ignorance-expressing terms like maybe and if interact: they iterate, and when they do they exhibit scopelessness. Second, to argue that there is an ambiguity in our theoretical toolbox, and that exposing that opens the door to a solution to the puzzle. And third, to explore the reach of that solution. Along the way, the paper highlights a number of pleasing properties of two elegant semantic theories, explores some (...) meta-theoretic properties of dynamic notions of meaning, dips its toe into some hazardous waters, and offers characterization theorems for the space of meanings an indicative conditional can have. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

In substructural logics, structural principles may hold in some fragments of a consequence relation without holding globally. I look at this phenomenon in my preferred substructural logic, in which Weakening and Cut fail but which is supra-intuitionistic. I introduce object language operators that keep track of the admissibility of Weakening and of intuitionistic implications. I end with some ideas about local transitivity.

It has recently been argued that indeterminacy and indeterminism make most ordinary counterfactuals false. I argue that a plausible way to avoid such counterfactual skepticism is to postulate the existence of primitive modal facts that serve as truth-makers for counterfactual claims. Moreover, I defend a new theory of ‘might’ counterfactuals, and develop assertability and knowledge criteria to suit such unobservable ‘counterfacts’.

Brogaard and Salerno (2008) argued that counter-examples to contraposition, strengthening the antecedent, and hypothetical syllogism involving subjunctive conditionals only seem to work because they involve a contextual fallacy where the context assumed in the premise(s) is illicitly shifted in the conclusion. To avoid such counter-examples they have proposed that the context must remain fixed when evaluating an argument for validity. That is the Brogaard-Salerno Stricture. Tristan Haze (2016), however, has recently objected that intuitively valid argumentative forms such as conjunction introduction (...) do not satisfy this constraint. This paper has two goals. First, it argues that the Brogaard-Salerno Stricture is not violated in Haze’s putative counter-example. Second, it argues that since this stricture blocks the usual counter-examples to instances of classical argumentative forms that involve indicative or subjunctive conditionals, it is reasonable to infer that indicative and subjunctive conditionals are material. (shrink)

Conditional perfection is the phenomenon in which conditionals are strengthened to biconditionals. In some contexts, “If A, B” is understood as if it meant “A if and only if B.” We present and discuss a series of experiments designed to test one of the most promising pragmatic accounts of conditional perfection. This is the idea that conditional perfection is a form of exhaustification—that is a strengthening to an exhaustive reading, triggered by a question that the conditional answers. If a speaker (...) is asked how B comes about, then the answer “If A, B” is interpreted exhaustively to meaning that A is the only way to bring about B. Hence, “A if and only if B.” We uncover evidence that conditional perfection is a form of exhaustification, but not that it is triggered by a relationship to a salient question. (shrink)

review of Evans & Over *ifs*, a book on the psychology of conditionals.

http://alexanthony.org/dispositions%20and%20modality.pdf.

The main goal of this paper is to investigate the relation between the meaning of a sentence and its truth conditions. We report on a comprehension experiment on counterfactual conditionals, based on a context in which a light is controlled by two switches. Our main finding is that the truth-conditionally equivalent clauses (i) "switch A or switch B is down" and (ii) "switch A and switch B are not both up" make different semantic contributions when embedded in a conditional antecedent. (...) Assuming compositionality, this means that (i) and (ii) differ in meaning, which implies that the meaning of a sentential clause cannot be identified with its truth conditions. We show that our data have a clear explanation in inquisitive semantics: in a conditional antecedent, (i) introduces two distinct assumptions, while (ii) introduces only one. Independently of the complications stemming from disjunctive antecedents, our results also challenge analyses of counterfactuals in terms of minimal change from the actual state of affairs: we show that such analyses cannot account for our findings, regardless of what changes are considered minimal. (shrink)

In this article the standard philosophical method involving intuition-driven conceptual analysis is challenged in a new way. This orthodox approach to philosophy takes analysanda to be the specifications of the content of concepts in the form of sets of necessary and sufficient conditions. Here it is argued that there is no adequate account of what necessary and sufficient conditions are. So, the targets of applications of the standard philosophical method so understood are not sufficiently well understood for this method to (...) be dependable. (shrink)

I argue that taking the Practical Conditionals Thesis seriously demands a new understanding of the semantics of such conditionals. Practical Conditionals Thesis: A practical conditional [if A][ought] expresses B’s conditional preferability given A Paul Weirich has argued that the conditional utility of a state of affairs B on A is to be identified as the degree to which it is desired under indicative supposition that A. Similarly, exploiting the PCT, I will argue that the proper analysis of indicative practical conditionals (...) is in terms of what is planned, desired, or preferred, given suppositional changes to an agent’s information. Implementing such a conception of conditional preference in a semantic analysis of indicative practical conditionals turns out to be incompatible with any approach which treats the indicative conditional as expressing non-vacuous universal quantification over some domain of relevant antecedent-possibilities. Such analyses, I argue, encode a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is to be best, given some condition. The analysis that does the best vis-à-vis the PCT is, instead, one that blends a Context-Shifty account of indicative antecedents with an Expressivistic, or non-propositional, treatment of their practical consequents. (shrink)

Following Nancy Cartwright and others, I suggest that most (if not all) theories incorporate, or depend on, one or more idealizing assumptions. I then argue that such theories ought to be regimented as counterfactuals, the antecedents of which are simplifying assumptions. If this account of the logic form of theories is granted, then a serious problem arises for Bayesians concerning the prior probabilities of theories that have counterfactual form. If no such probabilities can be assigned, the the posterior probabilities will (...) be undefined, as the latter are defined in terms of the former. I argue here that the most plausible attempts to address the problem of probabilities of conditionals fail to help Bayesians, and, hence, that Bayesians are faced with a new problem. In so far as these proposed solutions fail, I argue that Bayesians must give up Bayesianism or accept the counterintuitive view that no theories that incorporate any idealizations have ever really been confirmed to any extent whatsoever. Moreover, as it appears that the latter horn of this dilemma is highly implausible, we are left with the conclusion that Bayesianism should be rejected, at least as it stands. (shrink)

According to the truth-functional analysis of conditions, to be ‘necessary for’ and ‘sufficient for’ are converse relations. From this, it follows that to be ‘necessary and sufficient for’ is a symmetric relation, that is, that if P is a necessary and sufficient condition for Q, then Q is a necessary and sufficient condition for P. This view is contrary to common sense. In this paper, I point out that it is also contrary to a widely accepted ontological view of conditions, (...) according to which if P is a necessary and sufficient condition for Q, then Q is in no sense a condition for P; it is a mere consequence of P. (shrink)

I consider embeddings of one subjunctive conditional in the consequent of another, and argue that (if A then (if B then C)) is not equivalent to (if (A & B) then C ), given the meanings we usually give to the outer and the inner 'if'.

In an explanation ‘y because x’, because can be used to express an explanatory relation between an explanandum ‘y’ and an explanans ‘x’. But because can also be used to express the speaker’s reason for uttering ‘y’. This difference will be elucidated by connecting it with the distinction between the at-issue dimension and the speaker dimension of meaning. There are also internal relations between if and because that can help us find and analyse different uses of because, and thus also (...) different types of explanatory relations. (shrink)

Lee Archie argued that if any truth values are consistently assigned to a natural language conditional to which Modus Ponens and Modus Tollens are valid argumentative forms, and affirming the consequent is an invalid argumentative form, this conditional would have the same truth conditions than a material implication. This argument is simple and it requires few assumptions that are relatively uncontroversial. We show that it is possible to extend Archie’s argument to three-valued logics and five-valued logics and vindicate a slightly (...) weaker conclusion, but that is still important: even if we would not believe in bivalence and in the classical negation operator, we would still have good reasons to accept that natural language conditionals and the material implication share truth conditions. (shrink)

As the journal is effectively defunct, I am uploading a full-text copy, but only of my abstract and article, and some journal front matter. -/- Note that the pagination in the PDF version differs from the official pagination because A4 and 8.5" x 11" differ. -/- Traditionally, imperatives have been handled with deontic logics, not the logic of propositions which bear truth values. Yet, an imperative is issued by the speaker to cause (stay) actions which change the state of affairs, (...) which is, in turn, described by propositions that bear truth values. Thus, ultimately, imperatives affect truth values. In this paper, we put forward an idea that allows us to reason with imperatives using classical logic by constructing a one-to-one correspondence between imperatives and a particular class of declaratives. (shrink)

This paper deals with Austinian ifs of every stripe within classical logic. It is argued that they are truth-functional and the theory of conditional elements is used. Ellipsis is key. Corrects an error in Fulda (2010) in translation and therefore scope. -/- The PDF is made available gratis by the Publisher.

In this article I define a strong conditional for classical sentential logic, and then extend it to three non-classical sentential logics. It is stronger than the material conditional and is not subject to the standard paradoxes of material implication, nor is it subject to some of the standard paradoxes of C. I. Lewis’s strict implication. My conditional has some counterintuitive consequences of its own, but I think its pros outweigh its cons. In any case, one can always augment one’s language (...) with more than one conditional, and it may be that no single conditional will satisfy all of our intuitions about how a conditional should behave. Finally, I suspect the strong conditional will be of more use for logic rather than the philosophy of language, and I will make no claim that the strong conditional is a good model for any particular use of the indicative conditional in English or other natural languages. Still, it would certainly be a nice bonus if some modified version of the strong conditional could serve as one. -/- I begin by exploring some of the disadvantages of the material conditional, the strict conditional, and some relevant conditionals. I proceed to define a strong conditional for classical sentential logic. I go on to adapt this account to Graham Priest’s Logic of Paradox, to S. C. Kleene’s logic K3, and then to J. Łukasiewicz’s logic Ł, a standard version of fuzzy logic. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that a truth functional account of conditional statements ‘if A then B’ not only is inadequate, but that it eliminates the very conditionality expressed by ‘if’. Focusing only on the truth-values of the statements ‘A’ and ‘B’ and different combinations of these, one is bound to miss out on the conditional relation expressed between them. But this is not a flaw only of truth functionality and the material conditional. All approaches that try to treat conditionals (...) as mere functions of their antecedents and consequents will end up in some sort of logical atomism where causal matters simply are reduced to the joint occurrence of A and B. What we need is a non-extensional approach to conditionals that can account for hypotheticality, potentiality, and dependency, none of which can be understood by looking to the antecedent or consequent per se. (shrink)

It is generally agreed that constructions of the form “if P, Q” are capable of conveying a number of different relations between antecedent and consequent, with pragmatics playing a central role in determining these relations. Controversy concerns what the conventional contribution of the if-clause is, how it constrains the pragmatic processes, and what those processes are. In this essay, I begin to argue that the conventional contribution of if-clauses to semantics is exhausted by the fact that these clauses introduce a (...) proposition without presenting it as true so that the consequent can be understood in relation to it. Given our cognitive interests in such non-truth-presentational introductions, conditionals will make salient the wide but nevertheless disciplined variety of contents that we naturally attribute to them; no further substantial constraints of the sorts proposed by standard theories of conditionals are needed to explain the phenomena. If this is correct, it provides prima facie evidence for a radically contextualist account of conditionals according to which conditionals have no truth-evaluable or intuitively complete content absent some contextually provided, sufficiently salient relation between antecedent and consequent. (shrink)

This is the last of three lectures on anaphoric parallels between individuals and possibilities across languages (IMS, Stuttgart, 2000).

In English, discourse reference to time involves grammatical tenses interpreted as temporal anaphors. Recently, it has been argued that conditionals involve modal discourse anaphora expressed by a parallel grammatical system of anaphoric modals. Based on evidence from Kalaallisut, this paper argues that temporal and modal anaphora can be just as precise in a language that does not have either grammatical category. Instead, temporal anaphora directly targets eventualities of verbs, without mediating tenses, while modal anaphora involves anaphoric moods and/or attitudinal verbs.

Partee (1973) noted anaphoric parallels between English tenses and pronouns. Since then these parallels have been analyzed in terms of type-neutral principles of discourse anaphora. Recently, Stone (1997) extended the anaphoric parallel to English modals. In this paper I extend the story to languages of other types. This evidence also shows that centering parallels are even more detailed than previously recognized. Based on this evidence, I propose a semantic representation language (Logic of Change with Centered Worlds), in which the observed (...) parallels can be formally analyzed. (shrink)

An imperative conditional is a conditional in the imperative mood (by analogy with “indicative conditional”, “subjunctive conditional”). What, in general, is the meaning and the illocutionary effect of an imperative conditional? I survey four answers: the answer that imperative conditionals are commands to the effect that an indicative conditional be true; two versions of the answer that imperative conditionals express irreducibly conditional commands; and finally, the answer that imperative conditionals express a kind of hybrid speech act between command and assertion.

*This work is no longer under development* Two major themes in the literature on indicative conditionals are that the content of indicative conditionals typically depends on what is known;1 that conditionals are intimately related to conditional probabilities.2 In possible world semantics for counterfactual conditionals, a standard assumption is that conditionals whose antecedents are metaphysically impossible are vacuously true.3 This aspect has recently been brought to the fore, and defended by Tim Williamson, who uses it in to characterize alethic necessity by (...) exploiting such equivalences as: A⇔¬A A. One might wish to postulate an analogous connection for indicative conditionals, with indicatives whose antecedents are epistemically impossible being vacuously true: and indeed, the modal account of indicative conditionals of Brian Weatherson has exactly this feature.4 This allows one to characterize an epistemic modal by the equivalence A⇔¬A→A. For simplicity, in what follows we write A as KA and think of it as expressing that subject S knows that A.5 The connection to probability has received much attention. Stalnaker suggested, as a way of articulating the ‘Ramsey Test’, the following very general schema for indicative conditionals relative to some probability function P: P = P 1For example, Nolan ; Weatherson ; Gillies. 2For example Stalnaker ; McGee ; Adams. 3Lewis. See Nolan for criticism. 4‘epistemically possible’ here means incompatible with what is known. 5This idea was suggested to me in conversation by John Hawthorne. I do not know of it being explored in print. The plausibility of this characterization will depend on the exact sense of ‘epistemically possible’ in play—if it is compatibility with what a single subject knows, then can be read ‘the relevant subject knows that p’. If it is more delicately formulated, we might be able to read as the epistemic modal ‘must’. (shrink)

In a recent revision (chapter 4 of Nowakowa and Nowak 2000) of an older article Leszek Nowak (1992) has attempted to rebut Niiniluoto’s 1990 critical suggestion that proponents of the Poznań idealizational approach to the sciences have committed a rather elementary logical error in the formal machinery that they advocate for use in the analysis of scientific methodology. In this paper I criticize Nowak’s responses to Niiniluoto’s suggestion, and, subsequently, work out some of the consequences of that criticism for understanding (...) the role that idealization plays in scientific methodology. (shrink)