scholarly journals Presuppositions and Antipresuppositions in Conditionals

2011 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Leahy
Keyword(s):  
Scalar Implicature ◽  
Adequate Account ◽  
Indicative Conditionals ◽  
Subjunctive Conditionals ◽  
Counterfactual Conditionals ◽  
Issue Content

Utterances of counterfactual conditionals are typically attended by the information that their antecedents are false. But there is as yet no account of the source of this information that is both detailed and complete. This paper describes the problem of counterfactual antecedent falsity and argues that the problem can be addressed by appeal to an adequate account of the presuppositions of various competing conditional constructions. It argues that indicative conditionals presuppose that their antecedents are epistemically possible, while subjunctive conditionals bear no presupposition. Given this arrangement, utterance of the counterfactual results in an antipresupposition, that is, a scalar implicature generated from the presuppositions of competing alternatives rather than from the at-issue content of competing alternatives. The content of the antipresupposition is the negation of the presupposition of the competing indicative, i.e., that the antecedent of the conditional is known to be false by the speaker.

scholarly journals Presuppositions and Antipresuppositions in Conditionals

2015 ◽  
pp. 257
Author(s):  
Brian Leahy
Keyword(s):  
Scalar Implicature ◽  
Adequate Account ◽  
Indicative Conditionals ◽  
Subjunctive Conditionals ◽  
Counterfactual Conditionals ◽  
Issue Content

Utterances of counterfactual conditionals are typically attended by the information that their antecedents are false. But there is as yet no account of the source of this information that is both detailed and complete. This paper describes the problem of counterfactual antecedent falsity and argues that the problem can be addressed by appeal to an adequate account of the presuppositions of various competing conditional constructions. It argues that indicative conditionals presuppose that their antecedents are epistemically possible, while subjunctive conditionals bear no presupposition. Given this arrangement, utterance of the counterfactual results in an antipresupposition, that is, a scalar implicature generated from the presuppositions of competing alternatives rather than from the at-issue content of competing alternatives. The content of the antipresupposition is the negation of the presupposition of the competing indicative, i.e., that the antecedent of the conditional is known to be false by the speaker.

Counterfactuals and Probability

2021 ◽  
pp. 100-121
Author(s):  
Robert Stalnaker
Keyword(s):  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Objective Probability ◽  
Indicative Conditionals ◽  
Conditional Belief ◽  
Subjunctive Conditionals ◽  
Counterfactual Conditionals ◽  
The World

Dorothy Edgington has been a resolute defender of an NTV account of conditionals, according to which a conditional does not express a proposition that makes a categorical claim about the world, but instead make a qualified claim, or express a conditional belief, qualified by or conditional on the proposition expressed by the antecedent. Unlike some philosophers who defend an NTV view for indicative conditionals, but not for subjunctive or counterfactual conditionals, Edgington argues for the more radical thesis that both kinds of conditionals should be given a non-propositional analysis. This chapter considers Edgington’s NTV account of subjunctive conditionals, the role of objective probability in the account, and its relation to the possible-worlds propositional analysis of subjunctive conditionals.

Conditionals and Abduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 161-166
Author(s):  
Timothy Williamson
Keyword(s):  
Past Tense ◽  
Indicative Conditionals ◽  
Cognitive Differences ◽  
Indicative Conditional ◽  
Counterfactual Conditional ◽  
Counterfactual Conditionals ◽  
The Past ◽  
Testing Of Hypotheses ◽  
New Evidence

The chapter gives a preliminary sketch of some cognitive differences between indicative conditionals and counterfactual conditionals relevant to the testing of hypotheses by experiment. They especially concern cases where the indicative conditional can be decided without new evidence while the counterfactual conditional cannot. They also show that the antecedent of a ‘counterfactual’ conditional need not be presupposed to be false. Differences connected with the past tense morphology of ‘would’ are explored. Cases are given where the morphology should be understood as expressing a ‘fake past’, modal rather than temporal.

Indicative conditionals

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Actual Situation ◽  
Indicative Conditionals ◽  
Counterfactual Conditionals ◽  
Correct Account ◽  
As If

Examples of indicative conditionals are ‘If it rained, then the match was cancelled’ and ‘If Alex plays, Carlton will win’. The contrast is with subjunctive or counterfactual conditionals, such as ‘If it had rained, then the match would have been cancelled’, and categoricals, such as ‘It will rain’. Despite the ease with which we use and understand indicative conditionals, the correct account of them has proved to be very difficult. Some say that ‘If it rained, the match was cancelled’ is equivalent to ‘Either it did not rain, or the match was cancelled’. Some say that the sentence asserts that the result of ‘adding’ the supposition that it rained to the actual situation is to give a situation in which the match was cancelled. Some say that to assert that if it rained then the match was cancelled is to make a commitment to inferring that the match was cancelled should one learn that it rained. This last view is often combined with the view that indicative conditionals are not, strictly speaking, true or false; rather, they are more or less assertible or acceptable.

Knowledge and Conditionals

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert C. Stalnaker
Keyword(s):  
Formal Semantics ◽  
Inductive Reasoning ◽  
Conditional Reasoning ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Indicative Conditionals ◽  
Subjunctive Conditionals ◽  
Objective Chance ◽  
The Status ◽  
Reflection Principles ◽  
Dispositional Properties

A set of interconnected chapters on topics in the theory of knowledge. Part 1 considers the concept of knowledge, its logical properties, and its relation to belief and partial belief, or credence. It includes a discussion of belief revision, two discussions of reflection principles, a chapter about the status of self-locating knowledge and belief, a chapter about the evaluation of normative principles of inductive reasoning, and a development and defense of a contextualist account of knowledge. Part 2 is concerned with conditional propositions, and conditional reasoning, with chapters on the logic and formal semantics of conditionals, a discussion of the relation between indicative and subjunctive conditionals and of the question whether indicative conditionals express propositions, a chapter considering the relation between counterfactual propositions and objective chance, a critique of an attempt to give a metaphysical reduction of counterfactual propositions to nonconditional matters of fact, and a discussion of dispositional properties, and of a dispositional theory of chance.

scholarly journals A Counterexample to Modus Ponenses

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (6) ◽  
pp. 315-331
Author(s):  
Matthew Mandelkern ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Modus Ponens ◽  
Indicative Conditionals ◽  
Subjunctive Conditionals

McGee (1985) argued that modus ponens was invalid for the natural language conditional ‘If…then…’. Many subsequent responses have argued that, while McGee’s examples show that modus ponens fails to preserve truth, they do not show that modus ponens fails to preserve rational full acceptance, and thus modus ponens may still be valid in the latter informational sense. I show that when we turn our attention from indicative conditionals (the focus of most of the literature to date) to subjunctive conditionals, we find that modus ponens does not preserve either truth or rational full acceptance, and thus is not valid in either sense. In concluding I briefly consider how we can account for these facts.

scholarly journals Three paradoxes and a reasonable inference

2016 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-25
Author(s):  
Vladan Djordjevic
Keyword(s):  
Indicative Conditionals ◽  
Counterfactual Conditionals ◽  
The Third ◽  
Famous Paper ◽  
Reasonable Inference

In a previous paper of mine I offered solutions to three paradoxes, two of which were solved in Stalnaker?s famous paper ?Indicative Conditionals? in terms of his distinction between valid and reasonable inference. In a sense my solutions to the two paradoxes are very similar. In this paper I explain why, despite the similarity, I looked for a different solution and new distinctions. After explaining the similarity, I argue that my distinctions point to a more basic phenomenon, which I try to show by applying the distinctions to problems that cannot be solved in terms of Stalnaker?s distinction. The third paradox is one such problem. Beside that, each of the paradoxes, originally formulated in terms of indicative conditionals, can be formulated in terms of counterfactual conditionals. I solve these cases in exactly the same way, while Stalnaker?s distinction is not applicable to them.

From universalism to individualism: New approaches to economic growth analysis

2019 ◽  
pp. 108-126
Author(s):  
Ivan L. Lyubimov
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Structural Transformation ◽  
Emerging Economies ◽  
Growth Analysis ◽  
Extended Period ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Adequate Account ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
Catching Up

This paper examines the evolution of academic and applied approaches to analyze the problem of economic growth since the mid-XX century. For quite an extended period of time, these views were corresponding to universalist economic policies taking no adequate account of particularities and limitations that a certain catching-up economy embodied. New approaches analyzing the problems of economic growth, on the contrary, individualize growth diagnostics, structural transformation and the organization of reforms processes for the emerging economies. We argue that individualist approaches might be potentially more effective than the universalist ones for solving the problem of slow economic growth.

Differentiating scalar implicature from exclusion inferences in language acquisition

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jess Sullivan ◽  
Kathryn Davidson ◽  
Shirlene Wade ◽  
David Barner
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Scalar Implicature ◽  
Scalar Implicatures ◽  
Mutual Exclusivity ◽  
Logical Semantics

When acquiring language, children must not only learn the meanings of words, but also how to interpret them in context. For example, children must learn both the logical semantics of the scalar quantifier some and its pragmatically enriched meaning: ‘some but not all’. Some studies have shown that this “scalar implicature” that some implies ‘some but not all’ poses a challenge even to nine-year-olds, while others find success by age three. We asked whether reports of children’s early successes might be due to the computation of exclusion inferences (like contrast or mutual exclusivity) rather than an ability to compute scalar implicatures. We found that young children (N=214; ages 4;0-7;11) sometimes prefer to compute symmetrical exclusion inferences rather than asymmetric scalar inferences when interpreting quantifiers. This suggests that some apparent successes in computing scalar implicature can actually be explained by less sophisticated exclusion inferences.

Omissions, Agency, and Control

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Zimmerman
Keyword(s):  
Subjunctive Conditionals ◽  
Control Section ◽  
And Control

This chapter focuses on two questions: How is omission related to action? Are our omissions within our control? Section 5.1 examines the question whether the control that we have over our actions and their consequences may be understood partly in terms of subjunctive conditionals. Section 5.2 examines the question whether the control that we have over our omissions and their consequences may be understood in the same way as the control that we have over our actions and their consequences is to be understood. Section 5.3 discusses the moral and legal significance of the conclusions reached in the preceding sections.

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