Abstract

This work provides a critical survey of the dominant theories of the semantics of the English indicative conditional. The project is structured so as to bring out and disentangle the intricate presuppositions of two key parties: those who maintain that the semantics of indicative conditionals must be specified in terms of truth conditions and those who claim that indicative conditionals are truth conditionally impaired . I offer several novel suggestions toward redrawing battle lines. ;In Chapter One, I lay out and critically examine the traditional account of indicative conditionals according to which indicative conditionals share the logic--that is, the truth conditions--of the material conditional. I describe the view, show why it's tempting, and compile a roster of prima facie objections to it. ;In Chapter Two, I look at and raise problems for three attempts to redeem the traditional interpretation of indicative conditionals in the face of the objections adumbrated in Chapter One; one such attempt is concocted by David Lewis , one by Frank Jackson , and one by me. ;In Chapter Three, I describe Robert Stalnaker's proposal that indicative conditionals have non-truth-functional, possible-worlds truth conditions. Because Stalnaker shares the factualist conviction that indicative conditionals can be given some sort of truth conditional analysis, I here probe some of the assumptions that underlie this shared conviction. ;In Chapter Four, I introduce and the radical hypothesis, advocated most vigorously by Dorothy Edgington and Allan Gibbard , that indicative conditionals simply lack truth conditions. Since the force of this hypothesis depends in part upon the success of its claims against Stalnakerian propositions, I here revisit Stalnaker through the lenses of Edgington and Gibbard. ;In Chapter Five, I consider some debts and disadvantages of non-factualism as it has so far been conceived, and I urge that on a suitably deflated understanding of truth, it is unreasonable to deny truth conditions to indicative conditionals, and on a suitably cheapened notion of propositions, it is unreasonable to deny that indicative conditionals express them