Counterfactuals is David Lewis' forceful presentation of and sustained argument for a particular view about propositions which express contrary to fact conditionals, including his famous defense of realism about possible worlds.
With publication of the present volume, The University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science enters its second phase. The first fourteen volumes in the Series were produced under the managing editorship of Professor James J. Leach, with the cooperation of a local editorial board. Many of these volumes resulted from colloguia and workshops held in con nection with the University of Western Ontario Graduate Programme in Philosophy of Science. Throughout its seven year history, the Series has been devoted to publication of high quality work in philosophy of science con sidered in its widest extent, including work in philosophy of the special sciences and history of the conceptual development of science. In future, this general editorial emphasis will be maintained, and hopefully, broadened to include important works by scholars working outside the local context. Appointment of a new managing editor, together with an expanded editorial board, brings with it the hope of an enlarged international presence for the Series. Serving the publication needs of those working in the various subfields within philosophy of science is a many-faceted operation. Thus in future the Series will continue to produce edited proceedings of worthwhile scholarly meetings and edited collections of seminal background papers. How ever, the publication priorities will shift emphasis to favour production of monographs in the various fields covered by the scope of the Series. THE MANAGING EDITOR vii W. L. Harper, R. Stalnaker, and G. Pearce (eds.), lIs, vii.
Of the four chapters in this book, the first two discuss (albeit in consider ably modified form) matters previously discussed in my papers 'On the Logic of Conditionals' [1] and 'Probability and the Logic of Conditionals' [2], while the last two present essentially new material. Chapter I is relatively informal and roughly parallels the first of the above papers in discussing the basic ideas of a probabilistic approach to the logic of the indicative conditional, according to which these constructions do not have truth values, but they do have probabilities (equal to conditional probabilities), and the appropriate criterion of soundness for inferences involving them is that it should not be possible for all premises of the inference to be probable while the conclusion is improbable. Applying this criterion is shown to have radically different consequences from the orthodox 'material conditional' theory, not only in application to the standard 'fallacies' of the material conditional, but to many forms (e. g. , Contraposition) which have hitherto been regarded as above suspi cion. Many more applications are considered in Chapter I, as well as certain related theoretical matters. The chief of these, which is the most important new topic treated in Chapter I (i. e.
How are causal judgements such as 'The ice on the road caused the traffic accident' connected with counterfactual judgements such as 'If there had not been any ice on the road, the traffic accident would not have happened'? This volume throws new light on this question by uniting, for the first time, psychological and philosophical approaches to causation and counterfactuals. Traditionally, philosophers have primarily been interested in connections between causal and counterfactual claims on the level of meaning or truth-conditions. More recently, however, they have also increasingly turned their attention to psychological connections between causal and counterfactual understanding or reasoning. At the same time, there has been a surge in interest in empirical work on causal and counterfactual cognition amongst developmental, cognitive, and social psychologists—much of it inspired by work in philosophy. In this volume, twelve original contributions from leading philosophers and psychologists explore in detail what bearing empirical findings might have on philosophical concerns about counterfactuals and causation, and how, in turn, work in philosophy might help clarify the issues at stake in empirical work on the cognitive underpinnings of, and relationships between, causal and counterfactual thought.
Conditional structures lie at the heart of the sciences, humanities, and everyday reasoning. This is why conditional logics – logics specifically designed to account for natural language conditionals – are an active, interdisciplinary area. Discussing a wide range of topics, this book gives a formal and a philosophical account of indicative and counterfactual conditionals in terms of Chellas-Segerberg semantics.
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.
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.
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.