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The Ramsey Test and Conditional Semantics

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Abstract

Proponents of the projection strategy take an epistemic rule for the evaluation of English conditionals, the Ramsey test, as clue to the truth-conditional semantics of conditionals. They also construe English conditionals as stronger than the material conditional. Given plausible assumptions, however, the Ramsey test induces the semantics of the material conditional. The alleged link between Ramsey test and truth conditions stronger than those of the material conditional can be saved by construing conditionals as ternary, rather than binary, propositional functions with a hidden contextual parameter. But such a ternary construal raises problems of its own.

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Döring, F. The Ramsey Test and Conditional Semantics. Journal of Philosophical Logic 26, 359–376 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1017935520602

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