A defence of the Ramsey test

Mind 116 (461):1-21 (2007)
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Abstract

According to the Ramsey Test hypothesis the conditional claim that if A then B is credible just in case it is credible that B, on the supposition that A. If true the hypothesis helps explain the way in which we evaluate and use ordinary language conditionals. But impossibility results for the Ramsey Test hypothesis in its various forms suggest that it is untenable. In this paper, I argue that these results do not in fact have this implication, on the grounds that similar results can be proved without recourse to the Ramsey test hypothesis. Instead they show that a number of well entrenched principles of rational belief and belief revision do not apply to conditionals

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Richard Bradley
London School of Economics

Citations of this work

Difference-making conditionals and the relevant Ramsey test.Hans Rott - 2022 - Review of Symbolic Logic 15 (1):133-164.
Degrees of Assertability.Sam Carter - 2020 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 104 (1):19-49.
Trivializing Informational Consequence.Paolo Santorio - 2022 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 104 (2):297-320.
A Suppositional Theory of Conditionals.Sam Carter - 2021 - Mind 130 (520):1059–1086.

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References found in this work

On conditionals.Dorothy Edgington - 1995 - Mind 104 (414):235-329.
Inquiry.Robert Stalnaker - 1984 - Synthese 79 (1):171-189.
The Fixation of Belief and its Undoing: Changing Beliefs Through Inquiry.Isaac Levi - 1991 - New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press.

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