Unifying "if"-conditionals and unconditionals

Towards a Probabilistic Analysis for Conditionals and Unconditionals

Conditionals : A Unifying Ranking

The topic of conditionals is an extremely important one. It lies at the bottom of so many philosophical issues (causation, dispositions, lawlikeness, etc.), and current theories of conditionals seem to fairly ground these issues. On the other hand, the topic has become ever messier. Philosophical opinions grossly diverge, not only about de tails, but also about such fundamental questions as to ...

Even if after If then conditionals

This study evaluates how people represent “even if” conditionals when they have to integrate them with previous “if then” conditionals and also make an inference. The terms in the premises were ordered to facilitate their integration (Figure 1: If A then B; Even if B C). In half the cases, the “even if” conditional was expressed with a negation instead of an affirmation (If A then B; Even if no...

Indicative and counterfactual 'only if' conditionals.

We report three experiments to test the possibilities reasoners think about when they understand a conditional of the form 'A only if B' compared to 'if A then B'. The experiments examine conditionals in the indicative mood (e.g., A occurred only if B occurred) and counterfactuals in the subjunctive mood (A would have occurred only if B had occurred). The first experiment examines the conjuncti...

A Compositional Semantics for ‘even If’ Conditionals

This paper presents the first possible world semantics for concessive conditionals (i.e., even if A, C conditionals) constructed in a compositional way. First, the meaning of if is formalized through a semantics that builds on the proposal given by Stalnaker [1968]. A major difference from Stalnaker’s approach is that irrelevant conditionals (i.e., conditionals where the antecedent and the cons...