I demonstrate that a "speech act" theory of meaning for imperatives is—contra a dominant position in philosophy and linguistics—theoretically desirable. A speech act-theoretic account of the meaning of an imperative !φ is characterized, broadly, by the following claims. -/- LINGUISTIC MEANING AS USE !φ’s meaning is a matter of the speech act an utterance of it conventionally functions to express—what a speaker conventionally uses it to do (its conventional discourse function, CDF). -/- IMPERATIVE USE AS PRACTICAL !φ's CDF is to (...) express a practical (non-representational) state of mind—one concerning an agent's preferences and plans, rather than her beliefs. -/- Opposed to speech act accounts is a preponderance of views which deny that a sentence's linguistic meaning is a matter of what speech act it is used to perform, or its CDF. On such accounts, meaning is, instead, a matter of "static" properties of the sentence—e.g., how it depicts the world as being (or, more neutrally, the properties of a model-theoretic object with which the semantic value of the sentence co-varies). On one version of a static account, an imperative 'shut the window!' might, for instance, depict the world as being such that the window must be shut. -/- Static accounts are traditionally motivated against speech act-theoretic accounts by appeal to supposedly irremediable explanatory deficiencies in the latter. Whatever a static account loses in saying (prima facie counterintuitively) that an imperative conventionally represents, or expresses a picture of the world, is said to be offset by its ability to explain a variety of phenomena for which speech act-theoretic accounts are said to lack good explanations (even, in many cases, the bare ability to offer something that might meet basic criteria on what a good explanation should be like). -/- I aim to turn the tables on static accounts. I do this by showing that speech act accounts are capable of giving explanations of phenomena which fans of static accounts have alleged them unable to give. Indeed, for a variety of absolutely fundamental phenomena having to do with the conventional meaning of imperatives (and other types of practical language), speech act accounts provide natural and theoretically satisfying explanations, where a representational account provides none. (shrink)

In this paper I will develop a view about the semantics of imperatives, which I term Modal Noncognitivism, on which imperatives might be said to have truth conditions (dispositionally, anyway), but on which it does not make sense to see them as expressing propositions (hence does not make sense to ascribe to them truth or falsity). This view stands against “Cognitivist” accounts of the semantics of imperatives, on which imperatives are claimed to express propositions, which are then enlisted in explanations (...) of the relevant logico-semantic phenomena. It also stands against the major competitors to Cognitivist accounts—all of which are non-truth-conditional and, as a result, fail to provide satisfying explanations of the fundamental semantic characteristics of imperatives (or so I argue). The view of imperatives I defend here improves on various treatments of imperatives on the market in giving an empirically and theoretically adequate account of their semantics and logic. It yields explanations of a wide range of semantic and logical phenomena about imperatives—explanations that are, I argue, at least as satisfying as the sorts of explanations of semantic and logical phenomena familiar from truth-conditional semantics. But it accomplishes this while defending the notion—which is, I argue, substantially correct—that imperatives could not have propositions, or truth conditions, as their meanings. (shrink)

People reject ‘paradoxical’ inferences, such as: Luisa didn't play music; therefore, if Luisa played soccer, then she didn't play music. For some theorists, they are invalid for everyday conditionals, but valid in logic. The theory of mental models implies that they are valid, but unacceptable because the conclusion refers to a possibility inconsistent with the premise. Hence, individuals should accept them if the conclusions refer only to possibilities consistent with the premises: Luisa didn't play soccer; therefore, if Luisa played a (...) game then she didn't play soccer. Two experiments corroborated this prediction for three sorts of ‘paradox’, including a disjunctive paradox. (shrink)

Most instantiations of the inference ‘y; so if x, y’ seem intuitively odd, a phenomenon known as one of the paradoxes of the material conditional. A common explanation of the oddity, endorsed by Mental Model theory, is based on the intuition that the conclusion of the inference throws away semantic information. We build on this explanation to identify two joint conditions under which the inference becomes acceptable: (a) the truth of x has bearings on the relevance of asserting y; and (...) (b) the speaker can reasonably be expected not to be in a position to assume that x is false. We show that this dual pragmatic criterion makes accurate predictions, and contrast it with the criterion defined by the mental model theory of conditionals, which we show to be inadequate. (shrink)

(2014). Capturing the relationship between conditionals and conditional probability with a trivalent semantics. Journal of Applied Non-Classical Logics: Vol. 24, Three-Valued Logics and their Applications, pp. 144-152. doi: 10.1080/11663081.2014.911535.

The authors outline a theory of conditionals of the form If A then C and If A then possibly C. The 2 sorts of conditional have separate core meanings that refer to sets of possibilities. Knowledge, pragmatics, and semantics can modulate these meanings. Modulation can add information about temporal and other relations between antecedent and consequent. It can also prevent the construction of possibilities to yield 10 distinct sets of possibilities to which conditionals can refer. The mental representation of a (...) conditional normally makes explicit only the possibilities in which its antecedent is true, yielding other possibilities implicitly. Reasoners tend to focus on the explicit possibilities. The theory predicts the major phenomena of understanding and reasoning with conditionals. (shrink)

Epistemic modal operators give rise to something very like, but also very unlike, Moore's paradox. I set out the puzzling phenomena, explain why a standard relational semantics for these operators cannot handle them, and recommend an alternative semantics. A pragmatics appropriate to the semantics is developed and interactions between the semantics, the pragmatics, and the definition of consequence are investigated. The semantics is then extended to probability operators. Some problems and prospects for probabilistic representations of content and context are explored.

This paper argues that a priori justification is, in principle, compatible with naturalism—if the a priori is understood in a way that is free of the inessential properties that, historically, have been associated with the concept. I argue that empirical indefeasibility is essential to the primary notion of the a priori ; however, the indefeasibility requirement should be interpreted in such a way that we can be fallibilist about apriori-justified claims. This fallibilist notion of the a priori accords with the (...) naturalist’s commitment to scientific methodology in that it allows for apriori-justified claims to be sensitive to further conceptual developments and the expansion of evidence. The fallibilist apriorist allows that an a priori claim is revisable in only a purely epistemic sense. This modal claim is weaker than what is required for a revisability thesis to establish empiricism, so fallibilist apriorism represents a distinct position. (shrink)

This article begins by outlining some of the history—beginning with brief remarks of Quine's—of work on conditional assertions and conditional events. The upshot of the historical narrative is that diverse works from various starting points have circled around a nexus of ideas without convincingly tying them together. Section 3 shows how ideas contained in a neglected article of de Finetti's lead to a unified treatment of the topics based on the identification of conditional events as the objects of conditional bets. (...) The penultimate section explores some of the consequences of the resulting logic of conditional events while the last defends it. (shrink)

I assess the thesis that counterfactual asymmetries are explained by an asymmetry of the global entropy at the temporal boundaries of the universe, by developing a method of evaluating counterfactuals that includes, as a background assumption, the low entropy of the early universe. The resulting theory attempts to vindicate the common practice of holding the past mostly fixed under counterfactual supposition while at the same time allowing the counterfactual's antecedent to obtain by a natural physical development. Although the theory has (...) some success in evaluating a wide variety of ordinary counterfactuals, it fails as an explanation of counterfactual asymmetry. (shrink)

The problem of probabilities of conditionals is one of the long-standing puzzles in philosophy of language. We defend and update Adams' solution to the puzzle: the probability of an epistemic conditional is not the probability of a proposition, but a probability under a supposition. -/- Close inspection of how a triviality result unfolds in a concrete scenario does not provide counterexamples to the view that probabilities of conditionals are conditional probabilities: instead, it supports the conclusion that probabilities of conditionals violate (...) standard probability theory. -/- This does not call into question probability theory per se; rather, it calls for a more careful understanding of its role: probability theory is a theory of probabilities of propositions; but as conditionals do not express propositions, their probabilities are not subject to the standard laws. -/- We argue that both conditional probabilities and probabilities of conditionals are best understood in terms of the dynamics of supposing, modeled as a restriction operation on a probability space. This version of the suppositionalist view allows us to connect Adams' Thesis to the widely held restrictor view of the semantics of conditionals. -/- We address two common objections to Adams' view: that the relevant probabilities are ‘probabilities only in name’, and that giving up conditional propositions puts us at a disadvantage when it comes to interpreting compounds. -/- Finally, we argue that some putative counterexamples to Adams' Thesis can be diagnosed as fallacies of probabilistic reasoning: they arise from applying to conditionals laws of standard probability theory which are invalid for them. (shrink)

It can often seem like the attitude we hold towards a conditional should be our attitude in the consequent on the supposition of the antecedent. Following by Williamson (Suppose and Tell: The Semantics and Heuristics of Conditionals. Oxford University Press, 2020), we call this The suppositional rule (SR). The Adams-style non-propositional theories of indicatives upholds some key implications of SR, allowing, for instance, our credence in a conditional to be the probability of the consequent given the antecedent. Williamson (Suppose and (...) Tell: The Semantics and Heuristics of Conditionals. Oxford University Press, 2020) has recently provided a series of inconsistency arguments against SR. He thereby intends to undermine non-propositional views as well as other rivals to his favoured material conditional account. I outline a strategy which theorists of all stripes can employ to avoid Williamson’s arguments. I then show how non-propositionalists can implement this strategy. I show how they can uphold SR when it is intuitively compelling, whilst allowing it to fail when it is not. (shrink)

The Ramsey Test is considered to be the default test for the acceptability of indicative conditionals. I will argue that it is incompatible with some of the recent developments in conceptualizing conditionals, namely the growing empirical evidence for the _Relevance Hypothesis_. According to the hypothesis, one of the necessary conditions of acceptability for an indicative conditional is its antecedent being positively probabilistically relevant for the consequent. The source of the idea is _Evidential Support Theory_ presented in Douven (2008). I will (...) defend the hypothesis against alleged counterexamples, and show that it is supported by growing empirical evidence. Finally, I will present a version of the Ramsey test which incorporates the relevance condition and therefore is consistent with growing empirical evidence for the relevance hypothesis. (shrink)

According to the so-called Lockean thesis, a rational agent believes a proposition just in case its probability is sufficiently high, i.e., greater than some suitably fixed threshold. The Preface paradox is usually taken to show that the Lockean thesis is untenable, if one also assumes that rational agents should believe the conjunction of their own beliefs: high probability and rational belief are in a sense incompatible. In this paper, we show that this is not the case in general. More precisely, (...) we consider two methods of computing how probable must each of a series of propositions be in order to rationally believe their conjunction under the Lockean thesis. The price one has to pay for the proposed solutions to the paradox is what we call “quasi-dogmatism”: the view that a rational agent should believe only those propositions which are “nearly certain” in a suitably defined sense. (shrink)

The prevailing viewpoint concerning conditionals asserts two claims: (1) conditionals featuring non-assertive acts in their consequents, such as commands and promises, cannot plausibly be construed as assertions of material implication; (2) the most promising hypothesis for such sentences is conditional-assertion theory, which defines a conditional as a conditional speech act, i.e., the performance of a speech act given the assumption of the antecedent. This hypothesis carries significant and far-reaching implications, as conditional speech acts are not synonymous with a proposition possessing (...) truth conditions. This paper opposes such a view in two steps. Firstly, it presents a battery of objections against conditional-assertion theory. Secondly, it advances the argument that such examples can indeed be convincingly construed as assertions of material implication. (shrink)

There is almost a consensus among conditional experts that indicative conditionals are not material. Their thought hinges on the idea that if indicative conditionals were material, A → B could be vacuously true when A is false, even if B would be false in a context where A is true. But since this consequence is implausible, the material account is usually regarded as false. It is argued that this point of view is motivated by the grammatical form of conditional sentences (...) and the symbols used to represent their logical form, which misleadingly suggest a one-way 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. It is argued that this directional appearance is deceptive and does not reflect the underlying truth conditions of conditional sentences. This directional bias is responsible for both the unpopularity of the material account of conditionals and some of the main alternative principles and themes in conditional theory, including the Ramsey’s test, the Equation, Adams’ thesis, conditional-assertion and possible world theories. The directional mindset forgets a hard- earned lesson that made classical logic possible in the first place, namely, that grammatical form of sentences can mislead us about its truth conditions. There is a case to be made for a material account of indicative conditionals when we break the domination of words over the human mind. (shrink)

The material account proposes that indicative conditionals are material, but it is widely believed that this account cannot be applied to subjunctive conditionals. There are three reasons for this consensus: (1) the concern that most subjunctive conditionals would be vacuously true if they were material, which seems implausible; (2) the inconsistency with Adams pair, which suggests that indicative and subjunctive conditionals have different truth conditions; and (3) the belief that the possible world theories are a superior alternative to the material (...) account. In this paper, I will argue against (1) by showing that the counterintuitive aspects of vacuously true conditionals can be explained away in a consistent manner, regardless of whether they are indicative or subjunctive. I will support this argument by demonstrating that the positive arguments for the material account of indicatives also apply to subjunctives. I will counter (2) by explaining the Adams pair as logically equivalent conditionals that may be appropriate at different times, depending on the speaker’s epistemic situation. Finally, I will challenge (3) by arguing that the possible world account faces insurmountable issues and that a comprehensive material account of both indicatives and subjunctives is ultimately a more elegant solution. (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)

Different logic systems are motivated by attempts to fix the counter-intuitive instances of classical argumentative forms, e.g., strengthening of the antecedent, contraposition and conditional negation. These counter-examples are regarded as evidence that classical logic should be rejected in favour of a new logic system in which these argumentative forms are considered 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. It is impossible to (...) remove an argumentative form from a logical system without getting entangled in an intricate logical web, since these revisions imply the removal of other parts of a system we want to maintain. Consequently, these revisions are incoherent and unwarranted. At the very least, the usual approach in the analysis of counter-examples of argumentative forms must be seriously reconsidered. (shrink)

In this article, we address a major outstanding question of probabilistic Bayesian epistemology: how should a rational Bayesian agent update their beliefs upon learning an indicative conditional? A number of authors have recently contended that this question is fundamentally underdetermined by Bayesian norms, and hence that there is no single update procedure that rational agents are obliged to follow upon learning an indicative conditional. Here we resist this trend and argue that a core set of widely accepted Bayesian norms is (...) sufficient to identify a normatively privileged updating procedure for this kind of learning. Along the way, we justify a privileged formalization of the notion of ‘epistemic conservativity’, offer a new analysis of the Judy Benjamin problem, and emphasize the distinction between interpreting the content of new evidence and updating one’s beliefs on the basis of that content. (shrink)

A spectre haunts the semantics of natural language — the spectre of Triviality. Semanticists (in particular Rothschild 2013; Khoo and Mandelkern 2018a,b) have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre. None, I will argue, have yet succeeded.

KK is the thesis that if you can know p, you can know that you can know p. Though it’s unpopular, a flurry of considerations has recently emerged in its favour. Here we add fuel to the fire: standard resources allow us to show that any failure of KK will lead to the knowability and assertability of abominable indicative conditionals of the form ‘If I don’t know it, p’. Such conditionals are manifestly not assertable—a fact that KK defenders can easily (...) explain. I survey a variety of KK-denying responses and find them wanting. Those who object to the knowability of such conditionals must either deny the possibility of harmony between knowledge and belief, or deny well-supported connections between conditional and unconditional attitudes. Meanwhile, those who grant knowability owe us an explanation of such conditionals’ unassertability—yet no successful explanations are on offer. Upshot: we have new evidence for KK. (shrink)

Inquiry into the meaning of logical terms in natural language (‘and’, ‘or’, ‘not’, ‘if’) has generally proceeded along two dimensions. On the one hand, semantic theories aim to predict native speaker intuitions about the natural language sentences involving those logical terms. On the other hand, logical theories explore the formal properties of the translations of those terms into formal languages. Sometimes, these two lines of inquiry appear to be in tension: for instance, our best logical investigation into conditional connectives may (...) show that there is no conditional operator that has all the properties native speaker intuitions suggest if has. Indicative conditionals have famously been the source of one such tension, ever since the triviality proofs of both Lewis (1976) and Gibbard (1981) established conclusions which are in prima facie tension with ordinary judgments about natural language indicative conditionals. In a recent series of papers, Branden Fitelson has strengthened both triviality results (Fitelson 2013, 2015, 2016), revealing a common culprit: a logical schema known as IMPORT-EXPORT. Fitelson’s results focus the tension between the logical results and ordinary judgments, since IMPORT-EXPORT seems to be supported by intuitions about natural language. In this paper, we argue that the intuitions which have been taken to support IMPORT-EXPORT are really evidence for a closely related, but subtly different, principle. We show that the two principles are independent by showing how, given a standard assumption about the conditional operator in the formal language in which IMPORT-EXPORT is stated, many existing theories of indicative conditionals validate one, but not the other. Moreover, we argue that once we clearly distinguish these principles, we can use propositional anaphora to show that IMPORT-EXPORT is in fact not valid for natural language indicative conditionals (given this assumption about the formal conditional operator). This gives us a principled and independently motivated way of rejecting a crucial premise in many triviality results, while still making sense of the speaker intuitions which appeared to motivate that premise. We suggest that this strategy has broad application and an important lesson: in theorizing about the logic of natural language, we must pay careful attention to the translation between the formal languages in which logical results are typically proved, and natural languages which are the subject matter of semantic theory. (shrink)

Famous results by David Lewis show that plausible-sounding constraints on the probabilities of conditionals or evaluative claims lead to unacceptable results, by standard probabilistic reasoning. Existing presentations of these results rely on stronger assumptions than they really need. When we strip these arguments down to a minimal core, we can see both how certain replies miss the mark, and also how to devise parallel arguments for other domains, including epistemic “might,” probability claims, claims about comparative value, and so on. A (...) popular reply to Lewis's results is to claim that conditional claims, or claims about subjective value, lack truth conditions. For this strategy to have a chance of success, it needs to give up basic structural principles about how epistemic states can be updated—in a way that is strikingly parallel to the commitments of the project of dynamic semantics. (shrink)

We present a puzzle about knowledge, probability and conditionals. We show that in certain cases some basic and plausible principles governing our reasoning come into conflict. In particular, we show that there is a simple argument that a person may be in a position to know a conditional the consequent of which has a low probability conditional on its antecedent, contra Adams’ Thesis. We suggest that the puzzle motivates a very strong restriction on the inference of a conditional from a (...) disjunction. (shrink)

This paper presents corpus and experimental data that problematize the traditional analysis of must as a strong necessity modal, as recently revived and defended by von Fintel and Gillies :351–383, 2010). I provide naturalistic examples showing that must p can be used alongside an explicit denial of knowledge of p or certainty in p, and that it can be conjoined with an expression indicating that p is not certain or that not-p is possible. I also report the results of an (...) experiment involving lotteries, where most participants endorsed a sentence of the form must not-p despite being instructed that p is a possibility. Crucially, endorsement was much higher for must in this context than for matched sentences with knowledge or certainty expressions. These results indicate that the requirements for felicitous use of must are weaker than for know and certain rather than being at least as strong, as the epistemic necessity theory would predict. However, it is possible to account for these data while retaining the key insights of von Fintel and Gillies’ analysis of the evidential component of must. I discuss several existing accounts that could be construed in this way and explain why none is completely satisfactory. I then propose a new model that embeds an existing scalar theory into a probabilistic model of informational dynamics structured around questions and answers. (shrink)

This note is a sequel to Huber. It is shown that obeying a normative principle relating counterfactual conditionals and conditional beliefs, viz. the royal rule, is a necessary and sufficient means to attaining a cognitive end that relates true beliefs in purely factual, non-modal propositions and true beliefs in purely modal propositions. Along the way I will sketch my idealism about alethic or metaphysical modality.

There are numerous formal systems that allow inference of new conditionals based on a conditional knowledge base. Many of these systems have been analysed theoretically and some have been tested against human reasoning in psychological studies, but experiments evaluating the performance of such systems are rare. In this article, we extend the experiments in [19] in order to evaluate the inferential properties of c-representations in comparison to the well-known Systems P and Z. Since it is known that System Z and (...) c-representations mainly differ in the sorts of inheritance inferences they allow, we discuss subclass inheritance and present experimental data for this type of inference in particular. (shrink)

Discusses how to capture the link between the probability of indicative conditionals and conditional probability using a classical semantics for conditionals.

This article presents an extension of Lewis’ analysis of counterfactuals to a graded framework. Unlike standard graded approaches, which use the probabilistic framework, we employ that of many-valued logics. Our principal goal is to provide an adequate analysis of the main background notion of Lewis’ approach—the one of the similarity of possible worlds. We discuss the requirements imposed on the analysis of counterfactuals by the imprecise character of similarity and concentrate in particular on robustness, i.e., the requirement that small changes (...) in the similarity relation should not significantly change the truth value of the counterfactual in question. Our second motivation is related to the logical analysis of natural language: analyzing counterfactuals in the framework of many-valued logics allows us to extend the analysis to counterfactuals that include vague statements. Unlike previous proposals of this kind in the literature, our approach makes it possible to apply gradedness at various levels of the analysis and hence provide a more detailed account of the phenomenon of vagueness in the context of counterfactuals. Finally, our framework admits a novel way of avoiding the Limit Assumption, keeping the core of Lewis’ truth condition for counterfactuals unchanged. (shrink)

On an influential line of thinking tracing back to Ramsey, conditionals are closely linked to the attitude of supposition. When applied to counterfactuals, this view suggests a subjunctive version of the so-called Ramsey test: the probability of a counterfactual If A, would B ought to be equivalent to the probability of B, under the subjunctive supposition that A. I present a collapse result for any view that endorses the subjunctive version of the Ramsey test. Starting from plausible assumptions, the result (...) shows that one’s rational credence in a would-counterfactual and in the corresponding might-counterfactual have to be identical. (shrink)

This book proposes a semantic theory of conditionals that can account for (i) the variability in usages that conditional sentences can be put; and (ii) both conditional sentences of the form ‘if p, q’ and those conditional thoughts that are expressed without using ‘if’. It presents theoretical arguments as well as empirical evidence from English and other languages in support of the thesis that an adequate study of conditionals has to go beyond an analysis of specific sentence forms or lexical (...) items. The resulting perspective on conditionals is one in which conditionality is located at a higher level than that of the sentence; namely, at the level of thought. The author argues that it is only through adopting such a perspective, and with it, a commitment to context-dependent semantics, that we can successfully represent conditional utterances as they are used and understood by ordinary language users. It will be of interest to students and scholars working on the semantics of conditionals in the fields of linguistics (especially semantics and pragmatics) and philosophy of language. (shrink)

The logic of indicative conditionals remains the topic of deep and intractable philosophical disagreement. I show that two influential epistemic norms—the Lockean theory of belief and the Ramsey test for conditional belief—are jointly sufficient to ground a powerful new argument for a particular conception of the logic of indicative conditionals. Specifically, the argument demonstrates, contrary to the received historical narrative, that there is a real sense in which Stalnaker’s semantics for the indicative did succeed in capturing the logic of the (...) Ramseyan indicative conditional. (shrink)

Recent research (e.g., Evans & Over, 2004) has provided support for the hypothesis that people evaluate the probability of conditional statements of the form if p then q as the conditional probability of q given p , P( q / p ). The present paper extends this approach to pragmatic conditionals in the form of inducements (i.e., promises and threats) and advice (i.e., tips and warnings). In so doing, we demonstrate a distinction between the truth status of these conditionals and (...) their effectiveness as speech acts. Specifically, while probability judgements of the truth of conditional inducements and advice are highly correlated with estimates of P( q / p ), their perceived effectiveness in changing behaviour instead varies as a function of the conditional probability of q given not-p , P( q / ∼p ). Finally, we show that the conditional probability approach can be extended to predicting inference rates on a conditional reasoning task. (shrink)

According to long-standing orthodoxy in contemporary analytic philosophy of language, the content of a sentence (that is, the information it encodes and what on.

Barristers in England are obliged to follow the ‘cab rank rule’, according to which they must take any case offered to them, as long as they have time in their.

A conditional takes the form ‘If A, then C’. On the truth-conditional view of conditionals, conditional statements state things with truth-conditions. On the suppositional view, conditional statements involve the expression of a supposition. I develop and defend a view on which conditional statements both state things with truth-conditions and express suppositions. On this view, something is fundamentally right about standard truth-conditional and standard suppositional views. Considerations in favor of conditional contents lead us to attribute truth-conditional contents to conditional statements; considerations (...) in favor of the suppositional view then lead us to an unexpected account of these contents. The resulting view has a number of benefits, including a unified treatment of conditional speech acts, a plausible account of our practice of ascribing truth-values to conditional statements, a simple explanation of the apparent equivalence between probabilities of conditionals and conditional probabilities, an intuitive treatment of ‘Gibbardian stand-offs’, a plausible logic of conditionals, and an explanation of why theorizing about conditionals has proved so difficult. (shrink)

Conditional learning, where agents learn a conditional sentence ‘If A, then B,’ is difficult to incorporate into existing Bayesian models of learning. This is because conditional learning is not uniform: in some cases, learning a conditional requires decreasing the probability of the antecedent, while in other cases, the antecedent probability stays constant or increases. I argue that how one learns a conditional depends on the causal structure relating the antecedent and the consequent, leading to a causal model of conditional learning. (...) This model extends traditional Bayesian learning by incorporating causal models into agents’ epistemic states. On this theory, conditional learning proceeds in two steps. First, an agent learns a new causal model with the appropriate relationship between the antecedent and the consequent. Then, the agent narrows down the set of possible worlds to include only those which make the conditional proposition true. This model of learning can incorporate both standard cases of Bayesian learning and the non-uniform learning required to learn conditional information. (shrink)

Edgington has proposed a solution to the sorites paradox in terms of ‘verities’, which she defines as degrees of closeness to clear truth. Central to her solution is the assumption that verities are formally probabilities. She is silent on what verities might derive from and on why they should be probabilities. This paper places Edgington’s solution in the framework of a spatial approach to conceptualization, arguing that verities may be conceived of as deriving from how our concepts relate to each (...) other. Building on work by Kamp and Partee, this paper further shows how verities, thus conceived of, may plausibly be assumed to have probabilistic structure. The new interpretation of verities is argued to also help answer the question of what the verities of indicative conditionals are, a question which Edgington leaves open. Finally, the question of how to accommodate higher-order vagueness, given this interpretation, is addressed. (shrink)

This paper extends the defense of a simple theory of indicative conditionals previously proposed by the author, in which the truth conditions are material, and Grice-style assertability conditions are given to explain the paradoxes of material implication. The paper discusses various apparent counter-examples to the material account in which conditionals are not asserted, and so the original theory cannot be applied; it is argued that, nevertheless, the material theory can be defended.

Recent work on conditional reasoning argues that denying the antecedent [DA] and affirming the consequent [AC] are defeasible but cogent patterns of argument, either because they are effective, rational, albeit heuristic applications of Bayesian probability, or because they are licensed by the principle of total evidence. Against this, we show that on any prevailing interpretation of indicative conditionals the premises of DA and AC arguments do not license their conclusions without additional assumptions. The cogency of DA and AC inferences rather (...) depends on contingent factors extrinsic to, and independent of, what is asserted by DA and AC arguments. arguments do not license their conclusions without additional assumptions. The cogency of DA and AC inferences rather depends on contingent factors extrinsic to, and independent of, what is asserted by DA and AC arguments. (shrink)

A paper on how to adapt your probabilisitc beliefs when learning a conditional.

We establish a probabilized version of modus tollens, deriving from p(E|H)=a and p()=b the best possible bounds on p(). In particular, we show that p() 1 as a, b 1, and also as a, b 0. Introduction Probabilities of conditionals Conditional probabilities 3.1 Adams' thesis 3.2 Modus ponens for conditional probabilities 3.3 Modus tollens for conditional probabilities.

We examine two competing effects of beliefs on conditional inferences. The suppression effect occurs for conditionals, for example, “if she watered the plants they bloomed,” when beliefs about additional background conditions, for example, “if the sun shone they bloomed” decrease the frequency of inferences such as modus tollens (from “the plants did not bloom” to “therefore she did not water them”). In contrast, the counterfactual elevation effect occurs for counterfactual conditionals, for example, “if she had watered the plants they would (...) have bloomed,” when beliefs about the known or presupposed facts, “she did not water the plants and they did not bloom” increase the frequency of inferences such as modus tollens. We report six experiments that show that beliefs about additional conditions take precedence over beliefs about presupposed facts for counterfactuals. The modus tollens inference is suppressed for counterfactuals that contain additional conditions (Experiments 1a and 1b). The denial of the antecedent inference (from “she did not water the plants” to “therefore they did not bloom”) is suppressed for counterfactuals that contain alternatives (Experiments 2a and 2b). We report a new “switched‐suppression” effect for conditionals with negated components, for example, “if she had not watered the plants they would not have bloomed”: modus tollens is suppressed by alternatives and denial of the antecedent by additional conditions, rather than vice versa (Experiments 3a and 3b). We discuss the implications of the results for alternative theories of conditional reasoning. (shrink)

One of the most discussed issues in psychology—presently and in the past—is how to define and measure the extent to which human cognition is rational. The rationality of human cognition is often evaluated in terms of normative standards based on a priori intuitions. Yet this approach has been challenged by two recent developments in psychology that we review in this article: ecological rationality and descriptivism. Going beyond these contributions, we consider it a good moment for psychologists and philosophers to join (...) forces and work toward a new foundation for the definition of rational cognition. We take a first step in this direction by proposing that the rationality of both cognitive and normative systems can be measured in terms of their cognitive success. Cognitive success can be defined and gauged in terms of two factors: ecological validity (the system's validity in conditions in which it is applicable) and the system's applicability (the scope of conditions under which it can be applied). As we show, prominent systems of reasoning—deductive reasoning, Bayesian reasoning, uncertain conditionals, and prediction and choice—perform rather differently on these two factors. Furthermore, we demonstrate that conceptualizing rationality according to its cognitive success offers a new perspective on the time-honored relationship between the descriptive (“is”) and the normative (“ought”) in psychology and philosophy. (shrink)