scholarly journals Counterfactuals and Abduction

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Cumming ◽  
Lauren Winans
Keyword(s):  
Indicative Conditionals

We argue that counterfactuals and indicative conditionals are not so different. Certain notorious differences previously observed between pairs of indicative and counterfactual sentences are actually due to the presence of an anti-abductive modal auxiliary (would) in the consequent of the counterfactual. But such auxiliaries, of which will is another example, span the counterfactual-indicative divide.

On Assertion and Indicative Conditionals

1979 ◽  
Vol 88 (4) ◽  
pp. 565 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Indicative Conditionals

scholarly journals Chasing Hook: Quantified Indicative Conditionals

2021 ◽  
pp. 40-57
Author(s):  
Angelika Kratzer
Keyword(s):  
Indicative Conditionals ◽  
Material Implication ◽  
General Account ◽  
The Right

The chapter looks at indicative conditionals embedded under quantifiers, with a special emphasis on ‘one-case’ conditionals as in No query was answered if it came from a doubtful address. It agrees with earlier assessments that a complete conditional (with antecedent and consequent) is embedded under a quantifier in those constructions, but then proceeds to create a dilemma by showing that we can’t always find the right interpretation for that conditional. Contrary to earlier assessments, Stalnaker’s conditional won’t always do. The chapter concludes that the embedded conditional in the sentence above is a material implication, but the if-clause also plays a pragmatic role in restricting the domain of the embedding quantifier. That an appeal to pragmatics should be necessary at all goes with Edgington’s verdict that ‘we do not have a satisfactory general account of sentences with conditional constituents’.

scholarly journals The metalinguistic use of vague predicates in conditionals

2010 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 366
Author(s):  
Stefan Hinterwimmer
Keyword(s):  
Special Kind ◽  
Selection Function ◽  
Indicative Conditionals ◽  
Epistemic Modal ◽  
The World ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
To Receive

This paper deals with an at first sight surprising reading that indicative conditionals whose antecedents contain vague predicates receive under certain conditions. I argue that the existence of this reading can be explained if indicative conditionals are allowed to receive a special kind of metalinguistic interpretation. According to this reading, the worlds quantified over do not (possibly) differ from the world of evaluation with respect to some extralinguistic state of affairs, but only with respect to the standards according to which the vague predicates in the antecedents are interpreted. I show that the availability of the metalinguistic reading can be accounted for if both the epistemic modal bases and the selection function relative to which the worlds quantified over are determined are allowed to operate in a more flexible way than is standardly assumed.

Indicative Conditionals

1999 ◽  
pp. 63-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert C. Stalnaker
Keyword(s):  
Indicative Conditionals

The logic of indicative conditionals

If ◽  
2004 ◽  
pp. 13-32
Author(s):  
Jonathan St B T Evans ◽  
David E Over
Keyword(s):  
Indicative 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.

Conditional Acceptance

2019 ◽  
pp. 99-121
Author(s):  
Ofra Magidor
Keyword(s):  
Indicative Conditionals ◽  
Indicative Conditional ◽  
Conditional Acceptance ◽  
Conditional Claim ◽  
Suppositional View

What is the correct semantics for indicative conditionals, and under what circumstances should agents accept a conditional claim? This paper presents a new case which has important implications for attempts to address these questions. The case involves an utterance of a certain indicative conditional in a particular context. It is shown that at least three prominent theories of conditionals (the material conditional view, the suppositional view, and Stalnaker’s view) predict that you ought to assign a high credence to the conditional in this case, but, it is argued, this prediction is incorrect. Finally, the paper discusses what conclusions we can draw from this case, both on the semantics of conditionals and on the epistemology of inference on the basis of suppositions more generally.

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