Partial imaging and Thomason conditionals

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Abstract The main goal of this article is to give an adequate semantic treatment of Thomason conditionals, that is, conditionals where the consequent asserts the agent’s ignorance or disbelief on the antecedent. These conditionals present a challenge to the conventional epistemic view of conditionals, as outlined by the Ramsey test. We argue that we can give a correct treatment of this type of conditional by taking a probabilistic approach and applying the probability function Jeffrey Imaging as a way of supposing the antecedent. We demonstrate how this method not only unifies the treatment of different types of conditionals while maintaining consistency with the Ramsey test’s core insights, but also sheds light on the general nature of partial supposition.