Indicative Conditionals and Conditional Probability: Reply to Pollock

Abstract

In ‘Indicative Conditionals and Conditional Probability’ (this volume, pp. 249–252), Pollock constructs an intriguing situation to serve as a counterexample to the ‘Ramsey test’ thesis. Here by the Ramsey test thesis, I mean the thesis that, in whatever ways the acceptability, assertability, and the like of a proposition depend on its subjective probability, the acceptability, assertability, and the like of an indicative conditional A→B depend on the corresponding subjective conditional probability ρ(B/A). (I shall use ‘→’ as a symbol for the indicative conditional connective, and otherwise follow Pollock’s notation. The systematic development of the Ramsey test thesis was the work of Ernest Adams, 1975). I think that I can give an argument to show that in Pollock’s example, contrary to what he judges, if B → D is acceptable before one learns R, it is acceptable after one learns R.