Elucidations Episode 79: Anthony S. Gillies discusses conditionals
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Jan 6, 2016 Anthony S. Gillies, associate professor of philosophy at Rutgers specializing in semantics and conditionals, unpacks what if/then statements do. He contrasts indicative and counterfactual conditionals. He presents dilemmas like the or-to-if problem and defends a strict conditional view. He explains how antecedents guide evaluation and how similarity plays into counterfactuals.
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Indicatives Versus Counterfactuals
- Indicative conditionals are ordinary if-then claims about present or actual possibilities.
- Counterfactuals or subjunctives consider hypothetical or contrary-to-fact scenarios.
Conditionals Tie To Logical Consequence
- Indicatives tightly connect with patterns of impeccable inference and logical consequence.
- Both reasoning from a conditional plus its antecedent and reasoning to a conditional from hypothetical inference matter.
The Material Implication Dilemma
- Certain natural inference patterns push a naive semantics to material implication.
- That collapse makes conditionals trivially true when antecedents are false, which feels wrong.