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  1. Counterfactual Analysis by Algorithmic Complexity: A Metric Between Possible Worlds.Nicholas Corrêa & Nythamar Fernandes de Oliveira - 2022 - Manuscrito 45 (4):1-35.
    Counterfactuals have become an important area of interdisciplinary interest, especially in logic, philosophy of language, epistemology, metaphysics, psychology, decision theory, and even artificial intelligence. In this study, we propose a new form of analysis for counterfactuals: analysis by algorithmic complexity. Inspired by Lewis-Stalnaker's Possible Worlds Semantics, the proposed method allows for a new interpretation of the debate between David Lewis and Robert Stalnaker regarding the Limit and Singularity assumptions. Besides other results, we offer a new way to answer the problems (...)
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  • Reasonable Inferences for Counterfactuals.Ginger Schultheis - manuscript
    This paper is about four inferences patterns governing conditionals: Transitivity, Simplification, Contraposition, and Antecedent Strengthening. Transitivity, Simplification, and Contraposition are intuitively compelling. Although Antecedent Strengthening may seem less attractive at first, close attention to the full range of data reveals that it too has considerable appeal. An adequate theory of conditionals should account for these facts. The strict theory does so by validating them. But the variably strict theory invalidates them. So the variably strict theorist faces a question: why do (...)
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  • Indicative Conditionals as Strict Conditionals.Andrea Iacona - 2018 - Argumenta 4 (1):177-192.
    This paper is intended to show that, at least in a considerably wide class of cases, indicative conditionals are adequately formalized as strict conditionals. The first part of the paper outlines three arguments that support the strict conditional view, that is, three reasons for thinking that an indicative conditional is true just in case it is impossible that its antecedent is true and its consequent is false. The second part of the paper develops the strict conditional view and defends it (...)
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  • (1 other version)Causal modeling semantics for counterfactuals with disjunctive antecedents.Giuliano Rosella & Jan Sprenger - 2024 - Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 175 (9):103336.
    Causal Modeling Semantics (CMS, e.g., Galles and Pearl 1998; Pearl 2000; Halpern 2000) is a powerful framework for evaluating counterfactuals whose antecedent is a conjunction of atomic formulas. We extend CMS to an evaluation of the probability of counterfactuals with disjunctive antecedents, and more generally, to counterfactuals whose antecedent is an arbitrary Boolean combination of atomic formulas. Our main idea is to assign a probability to a counterfactual (A ∨ B) € C at a causal model M as a weighted (...)
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  • Aboutness and Modality.Dean McHugh - 2022 - Proceedings of the 23Rd Amsterdam Colloquium.
    In this paper I would like to offer a new framework for hypothetical reasoning, with the goal of predicting what scenarios we consider when we interpret a conditional or causal claim (such as a sentence containing the word ‘because‘). The idea is that when we interpret a conditional or causal claim, we identify a part of the world to change and imagine changing that. Sentences are about parts of the world: when we interpret a conditional antecedent or because clause, we (...)
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  • (1 other version)Causal Modeling Semantics for Counterfactuals with Disjunctive Antecedents.Giuliano Rosella & Jan Sprenger - manuscript
    Causal Modeling Semantics (CMS, e.g., Galles and Pearl 1998; Pearl 2000; Halpern 2000) is a powerful framework for evaluating counterfactuals whose antecedent is a conjunction of atomic formulas. We extend CMS to an evaluation of the probability of counterfactuals with disjunctive antecedents, and more generally, to counterfactuals whose antecedent is an arbitrary Boolean combination of atomic formulas. Our main idea is to assign a probability to a counterfactual (A ∨ B) > C at a causal model M as a weighted (...)
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  • Counterfactuals and modality.Gabriel Greenberg - 2021 - Linguistics and Philosophy 44 (6):1255-1280.
    This essay calls attention to a set of linguistic interactions between counterfactual conditionals, on one hand, and possibility modals like could have and might have, on the other. These data present a challenge to the popular variably strict semantics for counterfactual conditionals. Instead, they support a version of the strict conditional semantics in which counterfactuals and possibility modals share a unified quantificational domain. I’ll argue that pragmatic explanations of this evidence are not available to the variable analysis. And putative counterexamples (...)
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  • Exact Semantics for Indicative Conditionals.Hüseyin Güngör - 2017 - Dissertation, Bogazici University
    This thesis extends Kit Fine's truthmaker semantics for counterfactuals to indicative conditionals. First, I provide Fine's truthmaker semantics and his extension to counterfactuals. Then I introduce a notion of context state into the semantics and provide the verification-conditions for indicative conditionals by employing this notion of context state. Afterwards, I turn to the logic of indicative conditionals under exact semantics and discuss the principles and inference rules which raise disagreements between variably strict and strict conditionals accounts. The account I provide (...)
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  • If P, Then P!Matthew Mandelkern - 2021 - Journal of Philosophy 118 (12):645-679.
    The Identity principle says that conditionals with the form 'If p, then p' are logical truths. Identity is overwhelmingly plausible, and has rarely been explicitly challenged. But a wide range of conditionals nonetheless invalidate it. I explain the problem, and argue that the culprit is the principle known as Import-Export, which we must thus reject. I then explore how we can reject Import-Export in a way that still makes sense of the intuitions that support it, arguing that the differences between (...)
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  • On the Substitution of Identicals in Counterfactual Reasoning.Alexander W. Kocurek - 2020 - Noûs 54 (3):600-631.
    It is widely held that counterfactuals, unlike attitude ascriptions, preserve the referential transparency of their constituents, i.e., that counterfactuals validate the substitution of identicals when their constituents do. The only putative counterexamples in the literature come from counterpossibles, i.e., counterfactuals with impossible antecedents. Advocates of counterpossibilism, i.e., the view that counterpossibles are not all vacuous, argue that counterpossibles can generate referential opacity. But in order to explain why most substitution inferences into counterfactuals seem valid, counterpossibilists also often maintain that counterfactuals (...)
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  • Two switches in the theory of counterfactuals: A study of truth conditionality and minimal change.Ivano Ciardelli, Linmin Zhang & Lucas Champollion - 2018 - Linguistics and Philosophy (6).
    Based on a crowdsourced truth value judgment experiment, we provide empirical evidence challenging two classical views in semantics, and we develop a novel account of counterfactuals that combines ideas from inquisitive semantics and causal reasoning. First, we show that two truth-conditionally equivalent clauses can make different semantic contributions when embedded in a counterfactual antecedent. Assuming compositionality, this means that the meaning of these clauses is not fully determined by their truth conditions. This finding has a clear explanation in inquisitive semantics: (...)
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  • Hurford Conditionals.Matthew Mandelkern & Jacopo Romoli - 2018 - Journal of Semantics 35 (2):357-367.
    Compare the following conditionals: 'If John is not in Paris, he is in France' versus 'If John is in France, he is not in Paris.' The second sounds entirely natural, whereas the first sounds quite strange. This contrast is puzzling, because these two conditionals have the same structure at a certain level of logical abstraction, namely 'If ¬p+, then p.' -/- We argue that existing theories of informational oddness do not distinguish between these conditionals. We do not have an account (...)
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  • Simplifying with Free Choice.Malte Willer - 2018 - Topoi 37 (3):379-392.
    This paper offers a unified semantic explanation of two observations that prove to be problematic for classical analyses of modals, conditionals, and disjunctions: the fact that disjunctions scoping under possibility modals give rise to the free choice effect and the fact that counterfactuals license simplification of disjunctive antecedents. It shows that the data are well explained by a dynamic semantic analysis of modals and conditionals that uses ideas from the inquisitive semantic tradition in its treatment of disjunction. The analysis explains (...)
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  • Counterfactuals as Strict Conditionals.Andrea Iacona - 2015 - Disputatio 7 (41):165-191.
    This paper defends the thesis that counterfactuals are strict conditionals. Its purpose is to show that there is a coherent view according to which counterfactuals are strict conditionals whose antecedent is stated elliptically. Section 1 introduces the view. Section 2 outlines a response to the main argument against the thesis that counterfactuals are strict conditionals. Section 3 compares the view with a proposal due to Aqvist, which may be regarded as its direct predecessor. Sections 4 and 5 explain how the (...)
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  • A Uniform Theory of Conditionals.William B. Starr - 2014 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 43 (6):1019-1064.
    A uniform theory of conditionals is one which compositionally captures the behavior of both indicative and subjunctive conditionals without positing ambiguities. This paper raises new problems for the closest thing to a uniform analysis in the literature (Stalnaker, Philosophia, 5, 269–286 (1975)) and develops a new theory which solves them. I also show that this new analysis provides an improved treatment of three phenomena (the import-export equivalence, reverse Sobel-sequences and disjunctive antecedents). While these results concern central issues in the study (...)
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  • On the Pragmatics of Counterfactuals.Sarah Moss - 2010 - Noûs 46 (3):561-586.
    Recently, von Fintel (2001) and Gillies (2007) have argued that certain sequences of counterfactuals, namely reverse Sobel sequences, should motivate us to abandon standard truth conditional theories of counterfactuals for dynamic semantic theories. I argue that we can give a pragmatic account of our judgments about counterfactuals without giving up the standard semantics. In particular, I introduce a pragmatic principle governing assertability, and I use this principle to explain a variety of subtle data concerning reverse Sobel sequences.
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  • Updating as Communication.Sarah Moss - 2012 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 85 (2):225-248.
    Traditional procedures for rational updating fail when it comes to self-locating opinions, such as your credences about where you are and what time it is. This paper develops an updating procedure for rational agents with self-locating beliefs. In short, I argue that rational updating can be factored into two steps. The first step uses information you recall from your previous self to form a hypothetical credence distribution, and the second step changes this hypothetical distribution to reflect information you have genuinely (...)
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  • Counterfactuals, correlatives, and disjunction.Luis Alonso-Ovalle - 2009 - Linguistics and Philosophy 32 (2):207-244.
    The natural interpretation of counterfactuals with disjunctive antecedents involves selecting from each of the disjuncts the worlds that come closest to the world of evaluation. It has been long noticed that capturing this interpretation poses a problem for a minimal change semantics for counterfactuals, because selecting the closest worlds from each disjunct requires accessing the denotation of the disjuncts from the denotation of the disjunctive antecedent, which the standard boolean analysis of or does not allow (Creary and Hill, Philosophy of (...)
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  • Subjunctive conditionals’ local contexts.John Mackay - 2019 - Linguistics and Philosophy 42 (3):207-221.
    Philippe Schlenker gives a method of deriving local contexts from an expression’s classical semantics. In this paper I show that this method, when applied to the traditional variably strict semantics for subjunctive conditionals of Robert Stalnaker, David Lewis, and Angelika Kratzer, delivers an empirically incorrect prediction. The prediction is that the antecedent of a conditional should have the whole domain of possible worlds as its local context and therefore should be allowed to have only necessary presuppositions. In the later part (...)
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  • Similarity and cotenability.Vladan Djordjevic - 2013 - Synthese 190 (4):681-691.
    In this paper I present some difficulties for Lewis’s and similar theories of counterfactuals, and suggest that the problem lies in the notion of absolute similarity. In order to explain the problem, I discuss the relation between Lewis’s and Goodman’s theory, and show that the two theories are not related in the way Lewis thought they were.
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  • Counterfactuals, the Discrimination Problem and the Limit Assumption.José Díez - 2015 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 23 (1):85-110.
    The aim of this paper is to identify what I take to be the main conceptual problem in Lewis’ semantics for counterfactuals when the Limit Assumption is not satisfied, what I call the Discrimination Problem , and to present and discuss a modification of Lewis’ semantics that aims at solving DP. First, I outline Lewis’ semantics, highlighting the aspects that will be relevant for our discussion. Second, I present DP and discuss it with a heuristic example. Third, I present the (...)
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  • The defective conditional in mathematics.Mathieu Vidal - 2014 - Journal of Applied Non-Classical Logics 24 (1-2):169-179.
    This article focuses on defective conditionals ? namely indicative conditionals whose antecedents are false and whose truth-values therefore cannot be determined. The problem is to decide which formal connective can adequately represent this usage. Classical logic renders defective conditionals true whereas traditional mathematics dismisses them as irrelevant. This difference in treatment entails that, at the propositional level, classical logic validates some sentences that are intuitively false in plane geometry. With two proofs, I show that the same flaw is shared by (...)
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  • Addendum to “Subjunctive conditionals’ local contexts”.John Mackay - 2019 - Linguistics and Philosophy 42 (3):223-223.
    Philippe Schlenker gives a method of deriving local contexts from an expression’s classical semantics. In this paper I show that this method, when applied to the traditional variably strict semantics for subjunctive conditionals of Robert Stalnaker, David Lewis, and Angelika Kratzer, delivers an empirically incorrect prediction. The prediction is that the antecedent of a conditional should have the whole domain of possible worlds as its local context and therefore should be allowed to have only necessary presuppositions. In the later part (...)
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  • Lessons from Sobel sequences.Malte Willer - 2017 - Semantics and Pragmatics 10 (4):1-57.
    Folklore has it that Sobel sequences favor a variably strict analysis of conditionals over its plainly strict alternative. While recent discussions for or against the lore have focussed on Sobel sequences involving counterfactuals, this paper draws attention to the fact that indicative Sobel sequences are just as felicitous as are their counterfactual cousins. The fact, or so I shall argue here, disrupts the folklore: given minimal assumptions about the semantics and pragmatics of indicative conditionals, a textbook variably strict analysis fails (...)
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  • Beliefs and sentences in the head.Ken Warmbrōd - 1989 - Synthese 79 (2):201-30.
    It is argued thatde dicto andde re beliefs are attitudes towards syntactically structured entities (sentences) in the head. In order to identify the content of ade dicto orde re belief, we must be able to match causal relations of belief states to natural language inferences. Such match-ups provide sufficient empirical justification for regarding those causal relations as syntactic transformations, that is, inferences. But only syntactically structured entities are capable of enjoying such inferential relations. Hence,de dicto andde re beliefs must be (...)
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  • Permission.Donald Nute - 1985 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 14 (2):169 - 190.
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  • An incompatible pair of subjunctive conditional modal axioms.David Butcher - 1983 - Philosophical Studies 44 (1):71 - 110.
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