Conditionals: A Unifying Ranking-Theoretic Perspective

Philosophers' Imprint 15 (2015)
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Abstract

The paper takes an expressivistic perspective, i.e., it takes conditionals of all sorts to primarily express conditional beliefs. Therefore it is based on what it takes to be the best account of conditional belief, namely ranking theory. It proposes not to start looking at the bewildering linguistic phenomenology, but first to systematically study the various options of expressing features of conditional belief. Those options by far transcend the Ramsey test and include relevancies of various kinds and in particular the so-called “circumstances are such that” reading, under which also all conditionals representing causal relations can be subsumed. In this way a unifying perspective on the many kinds of conditionals is offered. The final section explains the considerable extent to which truth conditions for conditionals, which may seem lost in the expressivistic or epistemic perspective, may be recovered

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Difference-making conditionals and the relevant Ramsey test.Hans Rott - 2022 - Review of Symbolic Logic 15 (1):133-164.
Outline of a Theory of Reasons.Vincenzo Crupi & Andrea Iacona - 2023 - Philosophical Quarterly 73 (1):117-142.
On the Logical Form of Concessive Conditionals.Vincenzo Crupi & Andrea Iacona - 2022 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 51 (3):633-651.

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