Credences for strict conditionals

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (forthcoming)
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Abstract

Less‐than‐certain conditional judgments pose notorious problems for strict analyses of conditionals: across their various incarnations, these analyses have trouble making sense of how conditionals could have non‐trivial probabilities in the first place; minimal constraints on how such probabilities are to be assigned, moreover, lead to results that seem at odds with a strict outlook on the semantics of conditionals, most notably the validity of Conditional Excluded Middle. I demonstrate that a strict analysis can overcome the trouble if couched in a bilateral dynamic setting that properly extends the familiar Ramsey test for accepting conditionals to other iffy attitudes, most importantly the one of rejecting a conditional. The resulting framework accommodates the appeal of Stalnaker's thesis as well as of Conditional Excluded Middle in a strict setting. A discussion of how to handle the probability of epistemically modalized conditionals and of compounds of conditionals is provided.

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Malte Willer
University of Chicago

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References found in this work

A Theory of Conditionals.Robert Stalnaker - 1968 - In Nicholas Rescher (ed.), Studies in Logical Theory. Oxford,: Blackwell. pp. 98-112.
Counterfactuals.David Lewis - 1973 - Foundations of Language 13 (1):145-151.
Vagueness, truth and logic.Kit Fine - 1975 - Synthese 30 (3-4):265-300.
Epistemic Modals.Seth Yalcin - 2007 - Mind 116 (464):983-1026.
On conditionals.Dorothy Edgington - 1995 - Mind 104 (414):235-329.

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