Argumenta – Journal of Analytic Philosophy

 

Game Counterpossibles [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 11 • Author/s: Felipe Morales Carbonell
Topics: Epistemology, Metaphysics, Ontology, Philosophical logic

Counterpossibles, counterfactuals conditional with impossible antecedents, are notoriously contested; while the standard view makes them trivially true, some authors argue that they can be non-trivially true. In this paper, I examine the use of counterfactuals in the context of games, and argue that there is a case to be made for their non-triviality in a restricted sense. In particular, I examine the case of retro problems in chess, where it can happen that one is tasked with evaluating counterfactuals about illegal positions. If we understand illegality as a type of…

Conditionals and Probability: Introduction [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 12 • Author/s: Alberto Mura
Topics: Epistemology, Introduction, Metaphysics, Philosophical logic, Philosophy of science

Probabilities of Counterfactuals [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 12 • Author/s: Richard Bradley
Topics: Epistemology, Metaphysics, Philosophical logic, Philosophy of science

The subjective probability of a subjunctive conditional is argued to be equal to the expected conditional credence in its consequent, given the truth of its antecedent, of an ‘expert’: someone who reasons faultlessly and who, at each point in time, is as fully informed about the state of the world as it is possible to be at that time.

One or Two Puzzles about Knowledge, Probability and Conditionals [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 12 • Author/s: Moritz Schulz
Topics: Epistemology, Metaphysics, Philosophical logic, Philosophy of science

Rothschild and Spectre (2018b) present a puzzle about knowledge, probability and conditionals. This paper analyzes the puzzle and argues that it is essentially two puzzles in one: a puzzle about knowledge and probability and a puzzle about probability and conditionals. As these two puzzles share a crucial feature, this paper ends with a discussion of the prospects of solving them in a unified way.

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…

Towards a Unified Theory for Conditional Sentences [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 12 • Author/s: Elena Nulvesu
Topics: Epistemology, Metaphysics, Philosophical logic, Philosophy of science

A unified shared theory of conditionals does not still exist. Some theories seem suitable only for indicative but not for counterfactual ones (or vice versa), while others work well with simple conditionals but not compound ones. Ernest Adams’ approach—one of the most successful theories as far as indicative conditional are concerned—is based on a reformulation of Ramsey’s Test in a probabilistic thesis known as “The Equation”. While the so-called Lewis’ Triviality Results support Adams’ view that conditionals do not express genuine statements, the problem arises whether these results lead inevitably…

On Compound and Iterated Conditionals [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 12 • Author/s: Angelo Gilio, Giuseppe Sanfilippo
Topics: Epistemology, Metaphysics, Philosophical logic, Philosophy of science

We illustrate the notions of compound and iterated conditionals introduced, in recent papers, as suitable conditional random quantities, in the framework of coherence. We motivate our definitions by examining some concrete examples. Our logical operations among conditional events satisfy the basic probabilistic properties valid for unconditional events. We show that some, intuitively acceptable, compound sentences on conditionals can be analyzed in a rigorous way in terms of suitable iterated conditionals. We discuss the Import-Export principle, which is not valid in our approach, by also examining the inference from a material…

Discovering Early de Finetti’s Writings on Trivalent Theory of Conditionals [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 12 • Author/s: Jean Baratgin
Topics: Epistemology, Metaphysics, Philosophical logic, Philosophy of science

The trivalent and functional theory of the truth of conditionals developed by Bruno de Finetti has recently gathered renewed interests, particularly from philosophical logic, psychology and linguistics. It is generally accepted that de Finetti introduced his theory in 1935. However, a reading of his first publications indicates an earlier conception of almost all his theory. We bring to light a manuscript and unknown writings, dating back to 1928 and 1932, detailing de Finetti’s theory. The two concepts of thesis and hypothesis are presented as a cornerstone on which logical connectives…

Bypassing Lewis’ Triviality Results. A Kripke-Style Partial Semantics for Compounds of Adams’ Conditionals [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 12 • Author/s: Alberto Mura
Topics: Epistemology, Metaphysics, Philosophical logic, Philosophy of language

According to Lewis’ Triviality Results (LTR), conditionals cannot satisfy the equation (E) P(C if A) = P(C | A), except in trivial cases. Ernst Adams (1975), however, provided a probabilistic semantics for the so-called simple conditionals that also satisfies equation (E) and provides a probabilistic counterpart of logical consequence (called p-entailment). Adams’ probabilistic semantics is coextensive to Stalnaker-Thomason’s (1970) and Lewis’ (1973) semantics as far as simple conditionals are concerned. A theorem, proved in McGee 1981, shows that no truth-functional many-valued logic allows a relation of logical consequence coextensive with…

The Source of Modality: Introduction [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 14 • Author/s: Giacomo Giannini, Joaquim Giannotti
Topics: Epistemology, Introduction, Metaphysics, Modal Logic, Ontology, Theoretical philosophy

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