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Assertion and Conditionals

Author: Anthony Appiah

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1985-09-19

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 9780521304115

This book develops in detail the simple idea that assertion is the expression of belief. In it the author puts forward a version of 'probabilistic semantics' which acknowledges that we are not perfectly rational, and which offers a significant advance in generality on theories of meaning couched in terms of truth conditions. It promises to challenge a number of entrenched and widespread views about the relations of language and mind. Part I presents a functionalist account of belief, worked through a modified form of decision theory. In Part II the author generates a theory of meaning in terms of 'assertibility conditions', whereby to know the meaning of an assertion is to know the belief it expresses.

A Philosophical Guide to Conditionals

Author: Jonathan Bennett

Publisher: Clarendon Press

Published: 2003-04-03

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 019153174X

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Conditional sentences are among the most intriguing and puzzling features of language: analysis of their meaning and function has important implications for, and uses in, many areas of philosophy. Jonathan Bennett, one of the world's leading experts, distils many years' work and teaching into this Philosophical Guide to Conditionals, the fullest and most authoritative treatment of the subject. The literature on conditionals is difficult - needlessly so. Bennett's treatment is meticulously careful and luminously clear. He presents and evaluates in detail various approaches to the understanding of 'indicative' conditionals (like 'If Shakespeare didn't write Hamlet, some aristocrat did') and 'subjunctive' conditionals (like 'If rabbits had not been deliberately introduced into New Zealand, there would be none there today'); and he offers his own view, which will be recognized as a major original contribution to the subject. Journeying through this intellectual territory brings one into contact with the metaphysics of possible worlds, probability and belief-change, probability and logic, the pragmatics of conversation, determinism, ambiguity, vagueness, the law of excluded middle, facts versus events, and more. One might perhaps learn more philosophy from a thorough study of conditionals than from any other kind of work. Bennett's Guide is an ideal introduction for undergraduates with a philosophical grounding, and will also be a rich source of illumination and stimulation for graduate students and professional philosophers.

Suppose and Tell

Author: Timothy Williamson

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 0198860668

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What does 'if' mean? Timothy Williamson presents a controversial new approach to understanding conditional thinking, which is central to human cognitive life. He argues that in using 'if' we rely on psychological heuristics, fast and frugal methods which can lead us to trust faulty data and prematurely reject simple theories.

Knowledge and Conditionals

Author: Robert C. Stalnaker

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019-06-27

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0192538292

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Robert C. Stalnaker presents a set of essays on the structure of inquiry. In the first part he focuses on the concepts of knowledge, belief, and partial belief, and on the rules and procedures we use - or ought to use - to determine what to believe, and what to claim that we know. In the second part he examines conditional statements and conditional beliefs, their role in epistemology, and their relations to causal and explanatory concepts, such as dispositions, objective chance, relations of dependence, and independence. A central concern of the book is the interaction of different cognitive perspectives - the ways in which the attitudes of rational agents are or should be influenced by critical reflection on their present cognitive situation, on their own cognitive situations at other times, and on the cognitive situations of others with whom they interact. The general picture that is developed is naturalistic, following Hume in rejecting a substantive role for pure reason in the defense of inductive rules, and in giving causal concepts a central role in the description and explanation of our cognitive practices. However, Stalnaker rejects the side of Hume that aims to reduce concepts involving natural necessity to more basic descriptive concepts. Instead, he argues that the development of inductive rules and practices takes place in interaction with the development of concepts for giving a theoretical description of the world.

Conditionals

Author: Michael Woods

Publisher: Clarendon Press

Published: 1997-05-22

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 0191587826

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Conditionals has at its centre an extended essay on this problematic and much-debated subject in the philosophy of language and logic, which the widely respected Oxford philosopher Michael Woods had been preparing for publication at the time of his death in 1993. Woods discusses the distinction between different kinds of conditionals, and then goes on to cover a range of topics, including assertibility, conditional probability, possible-worlds theories, and conditional commands and questions. He ends up sketching a new theory of counterfactual conditionals. This essay is edited for publication by Wood's friend and colleague David Wiggins, and accompanied by a commentary specially written by a leading expert on the topic, Dorothy Edgington. The masterful and original treatment of conditionals presented in this book will demand the attention of all philosophers working in this area.

Conditionals, Paradox, and Probability

Author: Lee Walters

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-02-11

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0191021342

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Conditionals, Paradox, and Probability brings together fifteen original essays by experts in philosophy and linguistics. These specially written chapters draw on themes from the work of Dorothy Edgington, the first woman to hold a chair in philosophy at the University of Oxford. The contributors to this volume focus on the key topics to which Edgington has made many important contributions, including conditionals, vagueness, the paradox of knowability, and probability. Their insights will be of interest to philosophers, linguists, and psychologists working in philosophical logic, natural language semantics, and reasoning.

The Meaning of If

Author: Justin Khoo

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 371

ISBN-13: 0190096705

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Despite its small stature, if occupies a central place both in everyday language and the philosophical lexicon. In allowing us to talk about hypothetical situations, if raises a host of thorny philosophical puzzles about language and logic. Addressing them requires tools from linguistics, logic, probability theory, and metaphysics. Justin Khoo uses these tools to navigate a maze of interconnected issues about conditionals, some of which include: the nature of linguistic communication, the relationship between logical and natural languages, and the relationship between different kinds of modality. According to Khoo's theory, conditionals form a unified class of expressions which share a common semantic core that encodes inferential dispositions. Thus, rather than represent the world, conditionals are devices used to communicate how we are disposed to infer. Khoo shows that this theory can be extended to predict the probabilities of conditionals, as well as how different kinds of conditionals differ both semantically and pragmatically. Khoo's book will make for a significant contribution to the literature on conditionals and should be of interest to philosophers, linguists, and computer scientists.

Conditionals

Author: Renaat Declerck

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2012-08-09

Total Pages: 556

ISBN-13: 3110851741

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This book is an extremely detailed and comprehensive examination of conditional sentences in English, using many examples from actual language-use. The syntax and semantics of conditionals (including tense and mood options) and the functions of conditionals in discourse are examined in depth, producing an all-round linguistic view of the subject which contains a wealth of original observations and analyses. Not only linguists specializing in grammar but also those interested in pragmatics and the philosophy of language will find this book a rewarding and illuminating source.

On the Logic of Ordinary Conditionals

Author: Robert N. McLaughlin

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 1990-07-05

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 9780791402948

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On the Logic of Ordinary Conditionals offers a formal treatment of the logic of a type of conditional found in natural speech which differs substantially from the material conditional of propositional logic and from the conditionals afforded by theories of possible worlds. Conventional and necessary conditionals are studied as well as factual ones.

Logica Magna

Author: George Edward Hughes

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1990

Total Pages: 604

ISBN-13: 9780197260944

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In this fascicule Paul examines conditional propositions and inferences. Detailed notes make Paul's terminology and background ideas and assumptions more accessible to the modern reader, and an appendix contains substantial extracts from the writings of two fourteenth-century logicians, Ralph Strode and John Venator, both of whose works Paul makes extensive use of in this part of the Logica Magna.