Argumenta – Journal of Analytic Philosophy

 

Probability, Evidential Support, and the Logic of Conditionals [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 12 • Author/s: Vincenzo Crupi, Andrea Iacona
Topics: Epistemology, Metaphysics, Philosophical logic, Philosophy of language

Once upon a time, some thought that indicative conditionals could be effectively analyzed as material conditionals. Later on, an alternative theoretical construct has prevailed and received wide acceptance, namely, the conditional probability of the consequent given the antecedent. Partly following critical remarks recently appeared in the literature, we suggest that evidential support—rather than conditional probability alone—is key to understand indicative conditionals. There have been motivated concerns that a theory of evidential conditionals (unlike their more traditional counterparts) cannot generate a sufficiently interesting logical system. Here, we will describe results dispelling…