Abstract

According to Adams (Inquiry 8:166–197, 1965), the acceptability of an indicative conditional goes with the conditional probability of the consequent given the antecedent. However, some conditionals seem to be inappropriate, although their corresponding conditional probability is high. These are cases with a missing link between antecedent and consequent. Other conditionals are appropriate even though the conditional probability is low. Finally, we have the so-called biscuit conditionals. In this paper we will generalize analyses of Douven (Synthese 164:19–44, 2008) and others to account for the appropriateness of conditionals in terms of evidential support. Our generalization involves making use of Value, or intensity. We will show how this generalization helps to account for biscuit conditionals and conditional threats and promises. Finally, a link is established between this analysis of conditionals and an analysis of generic sentences.

Highlights

  • The material accounts of indicative conditionals have a wellknown problem: the truth of the consequent is sufficient to warrant the truth/acceptability of the conditional

  • Relevance theorists (Anderson and Belnap 1962; Urquhart 1972; Restall 1996) claim that the link should be either one of overlapping aboutness, or of the use of the antecedent for the proof of the consequent, while others (Krzyz_anowska et al 2013; Douven et al 2018) claim that for acceptability of an indicative conditional we have to be able to infer the consequent from the antecedent

  • We would analyse anankastic conditionals as we treated biscuit conditionals: the consequent is relevant for the hearer only in case the antecedent holds: if you want to go to Harlem, or sugar in your soup

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Summary

Introduction

The (standard and strict) material accounts of indicative conditionals have a wellknown problem: the truth (or known truth, for the strict material account) of the consequent is sufficient to warrant the truth/acceptability of the conditional As such, these theories have a hard time explaining what is wrong with a conditional like. For biscuit conditionals and conditional threats and promises, for instance, there should be a link between antecedent and consequent for the conditional to be appropriate This already suggests that if we want a more uniform analysis of (indicative) conditionals, the above theories that account for a link are not general enough. We will propose that for the appropriateness of a conditional, the conditional probability of the consequent on the antecedent has to be weighted by their contingency (basic proposal) This will be shown to solve the ‘missing link’ problem discussed above (application 1). In the final main section, we provide more detail of how our notion of representativeness is related with learning, and explain why representativeness is often confused with probability

From Learning to Representativeness
À PðCj:AÞ
Application 1
Application 2
Application 3
Applications 4 and 5
Application 6
Representativeness As Expectation
Findings
Conclusion
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