Quantity inferences in conditionals: a pilot experimental study

Relying upon Fillenbaum (1975), the paper reports on a more systematic experimental study of the role of the following factors (and levels) in the derivation of Conditional Perfection: negation (no negation, negation in an antecedent, negation in a consequent, negation both in an antecedent and a consequent), order of two clauses of a conditional sentence (if p, q; q, if p), and face vs. non-face speech acts (promises, threats vs. causals, temporals and contingent universals).

Pseudo-conditionals and causal assertibles in Stoic logic

http://dx.doi.org/ 10.5007/1808-1711.2016v20n3p417The Stoics not only analyzed sentences showing to be clear conditionals. They also reviewed other kinds of sentences related to the conditional that are not exactly conditionals, for example, the pseudo-conditionals and the causal assertibles. In this paper, I try to argue that the Stoic account of such sentences reveals that certain problematic issues that contemporary cognitive science is concerned with, such as the ways the conditionals can be expressed or the pragmatic phenomenon of the conditional perfection, were already studied by the Stoics, and that they even gave their solutions to those problems. To do that, I resort to the semantic analysis of models usually made by the mental models theory, and use it as a methodological tool.

Conditional perfection: the truth and the whole truth

Conditional Perfection is argued to arise when a sentence is silently conjoined with an exhaustivized version of the same string. The proposed account, the 'whole truth theory', is argued to not only capture Conditional Perfection but to also extend to upper-bounding inferences and exhaustive answers. A crucial piece of the analysis is the independently supported claim that bare conditionals are ambiguous between universal and existential readings.

Against Philo’s interpretation of conditional. The case of Aristotle´s thesis

There is an Aristotelian thesis that can be considered controversial. That is the thesis related to a denied conditional with only one propositional variable and in which, in addition, one of its clauses is also denied. While the thesis is not a tautology, people tend to accept it as true. Pfeifer’s approach can account for this fact. However, I try to show that this problem can also be explained from other alternative frameworks, in particular, from that of the mental models theory, that of López-Astorga based on the pragmatic phenomenon of conditional perfection, and that of the mental logic theory. Likewise, I indicate the difficulties regarding Aristotle’s thesis of the mental models theory and López-Astorga’s proposal, and conclude that the account of the mental logic theory is the strongest alternative to Pfeifer’s explanation and that what is clearly obvious is that conditional should not be materially interpreted.http://dx.doi.org/10.15304/ag.35.2.2542

Squib: A deflationary account of invited inferences

This squib reconsiders Geis & Zwicky’s influential proposal on Invited Inference, according to which conditionals are regularly “perfected” to biconditionals. We first show that the “regularity” assumption attached to conditional perfection is doubtful in light of established experimental findings concerning other logical terms, such as Some and or and the conjunction and. We then review existing conditional data with the aim of making them cohere with these other experimental findings. We argue that (a) the process that leaves the impression of a biconditional reading (the acceptance of a fallacious argument such as the Affirmation of the Consequent) arises only after all participants detect a violation on-line from what is essentially a surprising minor premise and that; (b) some participants make an effort to adjust to such unexpected violations at a relatively small cognitive cost in order to accept invalid arguments while others persist in rejecting whatever follows and at a greater cognitive cost. Both of these features of conditional processing undermine claims from Geis & Zwicky’s proposal.