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Jonathan Bennett, A Philosophical Guide to Conditionals
Journal of Pragmatics 38 (2006) 282–291 www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma
Book review Jonathan Bennett, A Philosophical Guide to Conditionals Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2003, pp. xiii + 387, ISBN: 0-19-925886-4 (hb); 0-19-925887-2 (pbk) This useful book on the philosophical character of indicative and counterfactual conditionals defends four relatively straightforward theses: (a) (b) (c) (d)
the ‘standard’ pragmatic defence of the material analysis of the indicative conditional is inadequate; the most adequate, indeed, the most elegant, analysis of the indicative conditional involves appeal to conditional probabilities; the most adequate, indeed, the most elegant, analysis of the counterfactual conditional involves appeal to possible worlds; the two analyses mentioned in (b) and (c) are necessary because indicative and counterfactual conditionals are essentially different kinds of objects.
I shall examine Bennett’s defence of each of these four theses in turn, and then dwell a little upon his discussion of what may be called the ‘classification problem’ of conditionals. First, the ‘standard’ pragmatic defence of the material analysis of the indicative conditional is inadequate. The material analysis states that the truth conditions (a.k.a. ‘the semantics’) for indicative conditionals are equivalent to the truth functional material conditional—that is, that an indicative conditional is true if the antecedent of that conditional is false or the consequent true. This analysis, when confronted with some natural language examples, frequently leads to some counterintuitive, or just puzzling, results: (1), (2) and (3) (all taken from Thomson (1990)) are, on this analysis, true: (1) (2) (3)
If Napoleon is alive, Oxford is in France. If Napoleon is dead, Oxford is in England. If Napoleon is alive, Oxford is in England.
and (4) is false: (4)
If Napoleon is dead, Oxford is in France.
Enter the pragmatic defence to remove the puzzles. Jackson (1987), Grice (1989) and Thomson (1990, but probably written in 1963 or 1964) all subscribe to a version of it. The 0378-2166/$ – see front matter # 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2005.02.002
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defence involves an appeal to contextual inferences (a.k.a. ‘the pragmatics’). The general form of the defence is clearly set out by Thomson (1990: 67): In saying ‘if p then q’ a speaker will say something which is in general anyway true or false. But by the act of making the statement he will do other things too. He will encourage us to think that he has some or other reason for thinking that if p then q and that his reasons are not such as to allow him to assert not- p nor such as to allow him to assert q. Grice and Jackson embroider this general pattern in different ways. For Grice, the reason or contextual inference is a generalized conversational implicature. For Jackson, it is a conventional implicature. The difference is that whereas Grice views the inference as a consequence of some overarching conversational maxims – in particular, the maxim of quantity – Jackson views it as a specific aspect of the conventional meaning of the word ‘if’. Both Grice’s and Jackson’s accounts are sufficiently vague to warrant considerable further discussion and this is plausibly why Bennett is reluctant to entertain these proposals too enthusiastically. He moves, for example, in his exposition of Grice, from a discussion of conversational implicature and semantic occamism to the claim that A certain thesis about the propriety of indicative conditionals, now widely accepted, gives us a sounder idea than Grice had of what he needed to explain; and in the light of this . . . his theory of conversational implicature falls short. (27–8) This thesis is the Ramsey test, and Bennett goes on to say Because the Ramsey test thesis is true we cannot equate ! with and explain the apparent counterexamples through conversational implicature. (30–1) These assertions are very conclusive and confident but they are insufficiently supported at this point in the tour. Similarly, in his exposition of Jackson, Bennett moves rapidly from a discussion of conventional implicature and ‘robustness’ to the conclusion that ‘‘Jackson’s general account of conventional implicature misfits his application of that concept to indicative conditionals’’ (42). In these abbreviated discussions, Bennett is showing all the signs of impatiently wanting to move on very quickly to more interesting and substantial matters. Given the evidently very rudimentary – and in Grice’s own admission of his own account, ‘‘somewhat tortuous’’ (Grice, 1989: 83) – nature of the various pragmatic defences, I think that he is right to do so. Let us follow our guide to those more interesting and substantial matters. The second, and more positive, thesis that Bennett seeks to defend is that the most adequate, indeed, the most elegant, analysis of the indicative conditional involves appeal to subjective conditional probabilities. The philosophical motivation for such a conjunction has been clearly stated: Although the interpretation of probability is controversial, the abstract calculus is a relatively well defined and well established mathematical theory. In contrast to this, there is little agreement about the logic of conditional sentences. . . . Probability
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theory could be a source of insight into the formal structure of conditional sentences. (Stalnaker, 1970: 64, emphasis added) and although the detailed technical background to this conjunction is complex, Bennett steers a judicious and steady course through it by walking in the large and frequently clear footsteps of Adams (e.g., 1965, 1975, 1998) and Edgington (e.g., 1986, 1995a). The keystone to the position is the Ratio Formula ((RF) see (Ha´jek, 2003a, 2003b). Informally stated, RF is the assertion that the probability of Claim1, given Claim2, is the probability of the conjunction of Claim1 and Claim2, divided by the probability of Claim2 (provided that the probability of Claim2 is greater than 0). More formally: ProbðClaim1=Claim2Þ ¼ ProbðClaim1 & Claim2Þ ProbðClaim2Þ where ProbðClaim2Þ > 0: From here, it is but a short hop to a related assertion which Bennett calls the Equation (E): ProbðClaim1 ! Claim2Þ ¼ ConProbðClaim2=Claim1Þ where ProbðClaim1Þ > 0 (where ‘ConProb’ signals conditional probability). This keystone is an intricate piece of conceptual architecture and Bennett is fairly evenhanded in detailing its merits and weaknesses. On the credit side, he says that RF/E ‘‘looks true’’ (52) and this because ‘‘conditionals are devices for intellectually managing states of partial information, and for preparing for the advent of beliefs that one does not currently have’’ (55). On the debit side, RF/E quickly falls victim to some vicious proofs that establish that no proposition ‘Claim1 ! Claim2’ satisfies the RF/E except in trivial systems. (The proof is rather technical and ‘trivial’ is being used in a specialised sense: it is sufficient here merely to note that ‘trivial’ means ‘uninteresting/uninformative’.) These are the David Lewis Triviality Proofs and once again Bennett does a fair job in walking the reader through some of the numerous variants of these proofs that have appeared in what has become something of a flourishing industry. But Bennett is ultimately unmoved by these proofs. The proofs pertain to indicative conditionals as propositions. But, Bennett says: A central thesis of this book – one in which I am in agreement with many contemporary workers in the field – is that conditionals are not ordinary propositions that are, except when vagueness or ambiguity infects them, always true or false. (59) So, if not propositions, then what? It’s time to return to the credit side of the account. Bennett sets great store by the Ramsey test. This ‘test’ finds its origins in a short footnote. It is worth quoting that footnote: If two people are arguing ‘If p will q?’ and are both in doubt as to p, they are adding p hypothetically to their stock of knowledge and arguing on that basis about q . . . We can say they are fixing their degrees of belief in q given p. If p turns out false, these degrees of belief are rendered void. (Ramsey, 1931, 247 fn1) There is some discussion of what this short footnote really amounts to (Read, 1995; Edgington, 1995b) but it is clear that the ‘test’ involves a switch from a focus on truth and
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truth-conditions to a focus on belief and whether to believe—to what is customarily referred to as credence and credibility. Belief is a somewhat subjective notion and possibly a poor foundation upon which to construct an account of indicative conditionals. Bennett defends this subjectivity against some (e.g., Davis, 1979) who might seek to firm it up and objectify it. In the course of this defence Bennett makes a false step and this false step makes many of his otherwise admirable efforts to explicate indicative conditionals in terms of subjective conditional probabilities appear incomplete, if not entirely misconceived. Let us take the defence in three stages. First, Bennett follows Jackson (1987) in calling the Ramsey Test ‘Adams’ because ‘‘Adams has greatly developed [the Ramsey Test] in the past twenty years’’ (28). He then announces that he intends to strengthen ‘‘the argument from ‘Only Adams’s theory can rescue the Equation’ to ‘‘Adams’s theory is true’’ (77). He finally claims, on the basis of certain arguments relating to the embedding of indicative conditionals, that ‘‘It is hard to avoid the idea that any sound understanding of indicative conditionals will have at its heart the equation, which seems to be tenable only on the basis of Adams’s theory’’ (104). The crucial false step is in associating Ramsey and Adams. The differences between them are more striking than are the similarities. Both are interested in probability – yes. Both are interested in conditional probability – well, yes. But Ramsey is interested almost wholly in subjective conditional probability and he suggests that a speaker’s degrees of belief can be measured by examining that speaker’s betting behaviour. He says: the degree of belief is a causal property of it, which we can express vaguely as the extent to which we are prepared to act on it . . . The old-established way of measuring a person’s belief is to propose a bet, and see what are the lowest odds which he will accept . . . This method I regard as fundamentally sound . . . all our lives we are in a sense betting. Whenever we go to the station we are betting that a train will really run, and if we had not a sufficient degree of belief in this we should decline the bet and stay at home. (Ramsey, 1931: 169, 172, 183) This is quite different from Adams who is principally interested in objective conditional probability. His focus is the obvious fact that premises in an argument are rarely certain and so the conclusion to that argument should not ‘contain’ more uncertainty than that exhibited by the premises. The fundamental difference between these two probabilists is extreme. Adams is himself alert to this possible false step. In a footnote to a paper that Bennett does not reference he says: Though it is off the present topic, I cannot refrain from commenting on another matter related to ‘‘General Propositions and Causality’’. This is the locus classicus of the widely commented on Ramsey Test analysis of conditionals . . ., which some writers have claimed is my own view. . . . This is erroneous. . . . My theory concerns the optimal degrees of belief that should attach to conditionals under various circumstances, and that has nothing at all to do with the mental operations which the thinker may perform in arriving at those beliefs (e.g., imagining adding propositions to his stock of knowledge, as in the Ramsey Test). (Adams, 1988: 67)
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So, on the one hand there is subjective probability in a causal theory of action, on the other, objective probability in a theory of partial deduction. In his account of indicative conditionals, Bennett rests content with the relatively superficial similarities between the two approaches but he fails to detect and discuss these much deeper, and much more important, differences. Let us turn to the third of Bennett’s theses, that the most adequate, indeed, the most elegant, analysis of the counterfactual conditional involves appeal to possible worlds. Bennett is quick to announce his ontological commitments. Possible worlds are not, for him, as they are for Lewis (1973, 1986), real (but alternative) concrete entities: for Bennett a world is . . . an item that may be about such a concrete reality. Such a world, then, must be fit to represent a concrete reality, though only one of them actually does so. Lewis asked how this representing is to be done, and canvassed three answers: worlds represent (1) as sentences do, or (2) as pictures do, or (3) ‘magically’. (156) (3) is so called, by Lewis, because its adherents ‘‘have no account of how their supposed abstract ‘worlds’ can represent concrete realities; so that they should be reduced to confessing that this representation is done by ‘magic’’’ (157). Bennett opts for this ‘magical’ (he calls it ‘abstract’) realism, though he concedes that ‘‘[a]t best I shall come up a somewhat rickety structure . . . There is much more to be said, but this is not the place for it’’ (156, 157). Perhaps one is best advised to put one’s ontological scruples to one side. As far as I can see, this preference for magical realism plays next to no critical role in the rest of the argument. At this point of the tour our guide is at his most rigorous and readers who relish a challenging intellectual work out will enjoy the terrain and Bennett’s route across it. He discusses (a) the Lewis-Stalnaker arguments on single or multiple closest worlds; (b) the nature of the development of time from that signalled by a conditional’s antecedent; (c) the character of ‘forks’, where the development of time can, in effect, take one of several trajectories; (d) the matter of ‘law’ and its relevance to the analysis of counterfactuals; (e) the possibility of ‘miracles’, or deviations from known and accepted laws; and (f) the definition of truth in the actual world, such that it may also be defined derivatively in nonactual worlds. In all of this, Bennett sides with (developments of) Lewisian arguments over the Stalnakerian variants (and the Chisholm and Goodman alternatives). To underscore this intellectual sympathy with Lewis, Chapters 10 through 21 might have had their own section title: ‘What Lewis might have said, but did not’. The argument is careful, the examples are helpful and the conclusions are illuminating. The careful study of these chapters, and frequent reference to the large accompanying literature that Bennett mentions, provides the reader with an exemplary education on a possible worlds analysis of counterfactuals (even though Bennett’s position on magical realism emerges as much more rickety than he appears willing to concede). It is worth noting, also, that possible worlds are enjoying something of a renaissance at the moment and the reader’s education will be further enhanced with reference to Divers (2002) and Girle (2003). Bennett’s fourth thesis is that the two analyses appealing to, on the one hand, conditional probabilities, and, on the other hand, possible worlds, are necessary because indicative and
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counterfactual conditionals are essentially different kinds of objects. This is, in a sense, an unfortunate thesis to advance. As Stalnaker remarks: . . . the parallels [between indicatives and counterfactuals, KPT] are extensive. It is not just that in English, and most if not all other languages, the same words are used in both cases and that many of the same patterns of inference are valid. There are other parallels and connections: open and counterfactual ifs combine with other words – for example with only, even, and might – in the same ways. There is no general agreement about exactly how one should analyze only if, even if, and if. . . might constructions, but the problems such combinations present seem to be independent of whether the conditional is subjunctive or indicative, open or counterfactual. Conditionals of both kinds can be paraphrased in similar ways. Instead of ‘‘if Oswald had not shot Kennedy’’ (or ‘‘if Oswald did not shoot Kennedy’’), I can say ‘‘suppose Oswald had not shot Kennedy’’ (or ‘‘suppose Oswald did not shoot Kennedy’’). Some conditionals are appropriately paraphrased with unless, and these include conditionals of both kinds: ‘‘John would not have come unless Mary had invited him’’ and ‘‘John did not come unless Mary invited him. (Stalnaker, 1984: 111–112) These remarks, and their implications, deserve to be taken seriously. One would not, after all, accept three separate analyses of ice, water and steam. One would seek a single analysis that, when couched in the most appropriate theoretical currency, unified the accounts of these substances. Why, then, accept two analyses for the explanation of ‘if’? Bennett acknowledges that the two kinds of conditional share some features of a common ‘logic’. For example, contraposition, the simplification of disjunctive antecedents, antecedent strengthening and transitivity all fail for both indicative and subjunctive conditionals. But, in spite of this common logical core, Bennett is more impressed by the differences. He notices that indicatives are zero-intolerant; that is to say that ‘‘an indicative conditional is useful, acceptable, worth asserting or at least considering, only to someone who regards its antecedent as having a chance of being true’’ (17). In other words, ‘‘nobody has any use for A ! C when for him P(A) = 0’’ (55, emphasis in the original). This claim is, of course, already embedded, in the form ‘. . . > 0’, both in the Ratio Formula and Equation. Counterfactuals, on the other hand, are zero-tolerant. Their antecedents are, on the whole, false. But they are impossibility-intolerant: In general, A > C (‘>’ is Bennett’s symbol for counterfactual ‘if’ and is not to be confused with the ‘is greater than ‘>’’ in RF and E, KPT) is useless, pointless, out of the arena, if A is intrinsically causally impossible. . . . The impossibility-intolerance of subjunctives is doubly unlike the zero-intolerance of indicatives. The two differ as impossibility from falsehood, and as fact from presupposition. The former concerns what is the case at all causally possible worlds, while the latter concerns what people presuppose about one world, the actual one. (231, emphasis in the original) Bennett underscores the importance of these differences when he says at the very end of his book, against the Unitarians, that ‘‘if we approach the two kinds of conditional wholly in this [unitarian, KPT] manner, we will lose some understanding that we could have had’’ (369). He does not, however, to my notice, examine the nature of that ‘wholly’.
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Finally, there is the ‘classification problem’ of conditionals. At stake here is ‘the relocation thesis’. This thesis states that the proper classification of conditionals does not, as the traditionalists claim, put first and second conditionals, (5) and (6), together, as distinct from third conditionals, (7): )
(5)
If it rains, the streets will get wet.
(6)
If it rained, the streets would get wet.
(7)
If it had rained, the streets would have got wet.
Rather, first and third conditionals are put together and are both distinct from second conditionals: (6)
If it rained, the streets would get wet.
(5)
If it rains, the streets will get wet.
(7)
If it had rained, the streets would have got wet.
)
This relocation thesis has been advanced and defended by Dudman (e.g., 1994, cf. 2001) on the basis that (i) (6) is ambiguous between a past reference (‘Whenever it rained . . .’) and future reference readings; (ii) on a past reference reading (6) may be said to be a proposition and so is truth-evaluable; and (iii) (5) and (7), on the other hand, are projective judgements about possible, but not necessarily guaranteed futures (relative to points of speech and reference). (5) and (7) are not propositions and so are not truth-evaluable. Bennett was once convinced by the relocation thesis and the novel (almost revolutionary, see Dudman, 1989) classification of conditionals that it entails (Bennett, 1988). But he has since moved back in with the traditionalists (Bennett, 1995, 2001). In Chapter 22, which he says contains his ‘‘weightiest original contribution to the understanding of conditionals’’ (vii), he gives a full account of his reasons for his reconversion. To anticipate a little, he argues that ‘‘the relocation thesis is shipwrecked on the facts about bases for indicative conditionals’’ (354). Let us consider the details. The story appears, in part, to be as follows. Bennett first distinguishes (1) ‘A’, the antecedent of a conditional; (2) ‘C’, the consequent of a conditional; (3) ‘E’ (for ‘evidence’), conjoining all that can be believed about particular matters of fact, minimally adjusted to assimilate A; and (4) ‘P’ (for ‘principles’), containing whatever basic doctrine (logic, mathematics, probability theory, knowledge of causality and/or morality) that can be used to infer C from the conjunction of A and E. He adds, rather disappointingly, that in what follows he will be ‘‘silent about P’’ (337). He then asks, with reference to any given conditional: ‘‘What is being thought to explain what?’’ (337) and he is careful to add that all he needs is that ‘‘bases for indicative conditionals often support explanations’’ (337, emphasis in original). He emphatically underscores that he does ‘‘not assert that indicative conditionals are explanations, but only that in many cases the basis for accepting such a conditional includes the makings of an explanation’’ (338, emphasis in original).
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Let us see how this is supposed to work. Consider explaining-C cases. In (8) (8)
(A) If Checkit Inc. conducted the audit, (C) the audit report is accurate.
Bennett says that the speaker’s E includes propositions about the company’s competence and honesty. Thus E, together with A, explains C. Similarly, in (9) (9)
(A) If Stauffenberg used his bomb, (C) Hitler is dead.
the speaker’s E includes propositions about the power of the bomb and the layout of the room. Again, E, together with A, explains C. Bennett adds, somewhat enigmatically Cases will vary in how natural it is to pick on A, rather than on some elements in E, as ‘the explanation’ for C; but I need not go into this. (338) Now consider explaining-A cases. In (10) (10)
(A) If my umbrella is not in the coat closet, (C) then I took it to campus this morning.
the speaker’s E includes the belief that he/she did not bring the umbrella home from campus today. Bennett says ‘‘That combines with C to yield a nice strong explanation for A’’ (338, emphasis added). Bennett adds When you accept a conditional on an explaining-A basis, you can properly use some cognate of ‘must’ in the consequent: ‘If the umbrella is not in the coat-closet, I must have taken it to campus this morning’ . . . This ‘must’ expresses a sense of being forced to accept a C-involving explanation because no other is as good. (339) Now consider explaining-E cases. In (11) (11)
(A) If the umbrella is not in the closet, (C) my memory is failing.
Bennett says that the speaker’s E contains a seeming memory of putting the umbrella in the closet and not a memory of removing it; this could be because the speaker put and left it there; but the hypothesis (A) that it is not there now eliminates that, and the best surviving explanation is (C), that the speaker’s memory is failing. This is, in outline, the kind of story that Bennett advances. With a few more details, which I would like to pass over, relating to different bases for a single conditional and for different speakers, he makes the following diagnosis: Does-will conditionals can have bases of any of the three types; so can indicative conditionals that are not of the Does-will form. The basis for an indicative conditional also supports the corresponding subjunctive if it is of the explaining-A or explaining-C type . . . but not if it is of the explaining-E type. (345) He concludes: The relocation thesis is in trouble right across the range of indicative conditionals, but most acutely with explaining-E Does-wills. Their form is its central topic, yet they refuse to behave as it demands. (348) QED.
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How should this analysis be judged? On the one hand, there is the relocation thesis that takes grammatical considerations into account and concludes that first and third conditionals should be classified together. On the other hand there is the neo-traditionalist thesis that takes ‘explanatory’ considerations into account and concludes that first conditionals belong back with the seconds and separate from the thirds. This is a clever defence of the tradition, but whilst Bennett remains silent on P, the principles that speakers allegedly employ to recruit (parts of) bases to move to other bases, then the jury must remain unconvinced. Bennett has presented a sketch of a defence, but he leaves the most important details entirely out of account. This conclusion should not distract too much from what is hugely useful contribution to the understanding of the analysis of conditionals. Bennett is quite honest about what he has done. He says very early on that ‘‘this book can serve as a guide to as much of the literature as I have been able to understand’’ (vii). But in conjunction with this modesty, he gives pointers to interesting other work, even though he does not discuss it. The reader is thus recommended to leave Bennett’s tour from time to time and explore for him or herself. Bennett notes, for example, that Levi (1996) presents a different account of what Ramsey meant. He adds: ‘‘His formidable work on this topic has defeated me. I hope my main conclusions in this book are not undercut by it’’ (30). Similarly, Bennett hints at Jeffrey’s (1983) work on probability dynamics. He says ‘‘I am awed by this performance’’ (66). He is frank about the route he has taken but generous enough to acknowledge that there are other paths to follow. Adventurous readers are recommended to have this book with them at all times, even though it is conceded that they will depart from it frequently.
References Adams, Ernest, 1965. The logic of conditionals. Inquiry 8, 166–197. Adams, Ernest, 1975. The Logic of Conditionals: An Application of Probability to Deductive Logic. Reidel, Dordrecht. Adams, Ernest, 1988. Consistency and decision: variations on Ramseyan themes. In: Harper, W.L., Skyrms, B. (Eds.), Causation in Decision, Belief Change, and Statistics. Proceedings of the Irvine Conference on Probability and Causation, vol. II. Kluwer Academic Publishers, London, pp. 49–69. Adams, Ernest, 1998. A Primer of Probability Logic. CSLI Publications, Stanford. Bennett, Jonathan, 1988. Farewell to the phlogiston theory of conditionals. Mind 97, 509–527. Bennett, Jonathan, 1995. Classifying conditionals: the traditional way is right. Mind 104, 331–354. Bennett, Jonathan, 2001. On forward and backward counterfactual conditionals. In: Preyer, G., Siebelt, F. (Eds.), Reality and Humean Supervenience: Essays on the Philosophy of David Lewis. Rowman and Littlefield, Oxford, pp. 177–202. Davis, Wayne A., 1979. Indicative and subjunctive conditionals. Philosophical Review 88, 544–564. Divers, John, 2002. Possible Worlds. Routledge, London. Dudman, Victor, 1989. Vive la Re´volution! Mind 98, 591–603. Dudman, Victor, 1994. On conditionals. Journal of Philosophy 91, 113–128. Dudman, Victor, 2001. Three twentieth-century commonplaces about ‘if’. History and Philosophy of Logic 22, 119–127. Edgington, Dorothy, 1986. Do conditionals have truth conditions? Critica 18, 3–39. Edgington, Dorothy, 1995a. On conditionals. Mind 104, 235–329. Edgington, Dorothy, 1995b. Conditionals and the Ramsey Test. The Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume LXIV, 67–86.
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Girle, Rod, 2003. Possible Worlds. Acumen, Chesham. Grice, Paul, 1989. Studies in the Way of Words. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Ha´jek, Alan, 2003a. What conditional probability could not be. Synthese 137, 273–323. Ha´jek, Alan, 2003b. Conditional probability is the very guide of life. In: Kyburg, Jr., H.E., Thalos, M. (Eds.), Probability is the Very Guide of Life: The Philosophical Uses of Chance. Open Court, Chicago and La Salle, IL, pp. 183–203. Jackson, Frank, 1987. Conditionals. Blackwell, Oxford. Jeffrey, Richard, 1983. The Logic of Decision, second ed. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Levi, Isaac, 1996. For the Sake of the Argument: Ramsey Test Conditionals, Inductive Inference, and Nonmonotonic Reasoning. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Lewis, David, 1973. Counterfactuals. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Lewis, David, 1986. On the Plurality of Worlds. Basil Blackwell, Oxford. Ramsey, Frank, 1931. Truth and probability. In: Braithwaite, R.B. (Ed.), The Foundations of Mathematics and other Logical Essays. Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd, London (Preface by G.E. Moore), pp. 156–198. Read, Stephen, 1995. Conditionals and the Ramsey Test, The Aristotelian Society Supplementary, vol. LXIV, 47–65. Stalnaker, Robert, 1970. Probability and conditionals. Philosophy of Science 37, 64–80. Stalnaker, Robert, 1984. Inquiry. MIT Press, London. Thomson, James, 1990. In defense of ‘’. Journal of Philosophy 87, 57–70. Ken Turner is senior lecturer in linguistics with special reference to the philosophy of language in the School of Languages at the University of Brighton. He has previously held appointments in the Department of Linguistics and Modern English Language at the University of Lancaster and in the School of Cognitive and Computing Studies at the University of Sussex. His principal research interests are in semantics and pragmatics and in pursuit of these interests he (a) has co-organised the International Conferences on Contrastive Semantics and Pragmatics (University of Brighton, 1995; University of Cambridge, 2000; Shanghai International Studies University, 2005); (b) has co-organised the Where Semantics meets Pragmatics workshop (Michigan State University, 2003) and (c) acts as series co-editor for Current Research in the Semantics/Pragmatics Interface (CRiSPI), published with Elsevier Science. The first volume of this series was his The Semantics/Pragmatics Interface from Different Points of View (1999). He has published widely on semantic and pragmatic themes, including editing or co-editing special issues of Language Sciences (1996), the Journal of Pragmatics (2002), the International Journal of Pragmatics (2003) and Acta Linguistica Hafniensia (anticipated in 2006). He is currently preparing a monograph on conditionals.
Ken Turner* School of Languages, University of Brighton Falmer, Brighton, East Sussex BN1 9PH, UK *Tel.: +44 1273 643345 fax: +44 1273 690710 E-mail address:[email protected] 1 February 2005
Book review Jonathan Bennett, A Philosophical Guide to Conditionals Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2003, pp. xiii + 387, ISBN: 0-19-925886-4 (hb); 0-19-925887-2 (pbk) This useful book on the philosophical character of indicative and counterfactual conditionals defends four relatively straightforward theses: (a) (b) (c) (d)
the ‘standard’ pragmatic defence of the material analysis of the indicative conditional is inadequate; the most adequate, indeed, the most elegant, analysis of the indicative conditional involves appeal to conditional probabilities; the most adequate, indeed, the most elegant, analysis of the counterfactual conditional involves appeal to possible worlds; the two analyses mentioned in (b) and (c) are necessary because indicative and counterfactual conditionals are essentially different kinds of objects.
I shall examine Bennett’s defence of each of these four theses in turn, and then dwell a little upon his discussion of what may be called the ‘classification problem’ of conditionals. First, the ‘standard’ pragmatic defence of the material analysis of the indicative conditional is inadequate. The material analysis states that the truth conditions (a.k.a. ‘the semantics’) for indicative conditionals are equivalent to the truth functional material conditional—that is, that an indicative conditional is true if the antecedent of that conditional is false or the consequent true. This analysis, when confronted with some natural language examples, frequently leads to some counterintuitive, or just puzzling, results: (1), (2) and (3) (all taken from Thomson (1990)) are, on this analysis, true: (1) (2) (3)
If Napoleon is alive, Oxford is in France. If Napoleon is dead, Oxford is in England. If Napoleon is alive, Oxford is in England.
and (4) is false: (4)
If Napoleon is dead, Oxford is in France.
Enter the pragmatic defence to remove the puzzles. Jackson (1987), Grice (1989) and Thomson (1990, but probably written in 1963 or 1964) all subscribe to a version of it. The 0378-2166/$ – see front matter # 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2005.02.002
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defence involves an appeal to contextual inferences (a.k.a. ‘the pragmatics’). The general form of the defence is clearly set out by Thomson (1990: 67): In saying ‘if p then q’ a speaker will say something which is in general anyway true or false. But by the act of making the statement he will do other things too. He will encourage us to think that he has some or other reason for thinking that if p then q and that his reasons are not such as to allow him to assert not- p nor such as to allow him to assert q. Grice and Jackson embroider this general pattern in different ways. For Grice, the reason or contextual inference is a generalized conversational implicature. For Jackson, it is a conventional implicature. The difference is that whereas Grice views the inference as a consequence of some overarching conversational maxims – in particular, the maxim of quantity – Jackson views it as a specific aspect of the conventional meaning of the word ‘if’. Both Grice’s and Jackson’s accounts are sufficiently vague to warrant considerable further discussion and this is plausibly why Bennett is reluctant to entertain these proposals too enthusiastically. He moves, for example, in his exposition of Grice, from a discussion of conversational implicature and semantic occamism to the claim that A certain thesis about the propriety of indicative conditionals, now widely accepted, gives us a sounder idea than Grice had of what he needed to explain; and in the light of this . . . his theory of conversational implicature falls short. (27–8) This thesis is the Ramsey test, and Bennett goes on to say Because the Ramsey test thesis is true we cannot equate ! with and explain the apparent counterexamples through conversational implicature. (30–1) These assertions are very conclusive and confident but they are insufficiently supported at this point in the tour. Similarly, in his exposition of Jackson, Bennett moves rapidly from a discussion of conventional implicature and ‘robustness’ to the conclusion that ‘‘Jackson’s general account of conventional implicature misfits his application of that concept to indicative conditionals’’ (42). In these abbreviated discussions, Bennett is showing all the signs of impatiently wanting to move on very quickly to more interesting and substantial matters. Given the evidently very rudimentary – and in Grice’s own admission of his own account, ‘‘somewhat tortuous’’ (Grice, 1989: 83) – nature of the various pragmatic defences, I think that he is right to do so. Let us follow our guide to those more interesting and substantial matters. The second, and more positive, thesis that Bennett seeks to defend is that the most adequate, indeed, the most elegant, analysis of the indicative conditional involves appeal to subjective conditional probabilities. The philosophical motivation for such a conjunction has been clearly stated: Although the interpretation of probability is controversial, the abstract calculus is a relatively well defined and well established mathematical theory. In contrast to this, there is little agreement about the logic of conditional sentences. . . . Probability
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theory could be a source of insight into the formal structure of conditional sentences. (Stalnaker, 1970: 64, emphasis added) and although the detailed technical background to this conjunction is complex, Bennett steers a judicious and steady course through it by walking in the large and frequently clear footsteps of Adams (e.g., 1965, 1975, 1998) and Edgington (e.g., 1986, 1995a). The keystone to the position is the Ratio Formula ((RF) see (Ha´jek, 2003a, 2003b). Informally stated, RF is the assertion that the probability of Claim1, given Claim2, is the probability of the conjunction of Claim1 and Claim2, divided by the probability of Claim2 (provided that the probability of Claim2 is greater than 0). More formally: ProbðClaim1=Claim2Þ ¼ ProbðClaim1 & Claim2Þ ProbðClaim2Þ where ProbðClaim2Þ > 0: From here, it is but a short hop to a related assertion which Bennett calls the Equation (E): ProbðClaim1 ! Claim2Þ ¼ ConProbðClaim2=Claim1Þ where ProbðClaim1Þ > 0 (where ‘ConProb’ signals conditional probability). This keystone is an intricate piece of conceptual architecture and Bennett is fairly evenhanded in detailing its merits and weaknesses. On the credit side, he says that RF/E ‘‘looks true’’ (52) and this because ‘‘conditionals are devices for intellectually managing states of partial information, and for preparing for the advent of beliefs that one does not currently have’’ (55). On the debit side, RF/E quickly falls victim to some vicious proofs that establish that no proposition ‘Claim1 ! Claim2’ satisfies the RF/E except in trivial systems. (The proof is rather technical and ‘trivial’ is being used in a specialised sense: it is sufficient here merely to note that ‘trivial’ means ‘uninteresting/uninformative’.) These are the David Lewis Triviality Proofs and once again Bennett does a fair job in walking the reader through some of the numerous variants of these proofs that have appeared in what has become something of a flourishing industry. But Bennett is ultimately unmoved by these proofs. The proofs pertain to indicative conditionals as propositions. But, Bennett says: A central thesis of this book – one in which I am in agreement with many contemporary workers in the field – is that conditionals are not ordinary propositions that are, except when vagueness or ambiguity infects them, always true or false. (59) So, if not propositions, then what? It’s time to return to the credit side of the account. Bennett sets great store by the Ramsey test. This ‘test’ finds its origins in a short footnote. It is worth quoting that footnote: If two people are arguing ‘If p will q?’ and are both in doubt as to p, they are adding p hypothetically to their stock of knowledge and arguing on that basis about q . . . We can say they are fixing their degrees of belief in q given p. If p turns out false, these degrees of belief are rendered void. (Ramsey, 1931, 247 fn1) There is some discussion of what this short footnote really amounts to (Read, 1995; Edgington, 1995b) but it is clear that the ‘test’ involves a switch from a focus on truth and
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truth-conditions to a focus on belief and whether to believe—to what is customarily referred to as credence and credibility. Belief is a somewhat subjective notion and possibly a poor foundation upon which to construct an account of indicative conditionals. Bennett defends this subjectivity against some (e.g., Davis, 1979) who might seek to firm it up and objectify it. In the course of this defence Bennett makes a false step and this false step makes many of his otherwise admirable efforts to explicate indicative conditionals in terms of subjective conditional probabilities appear incomplete, if not entirely misconceived. Let us take the defence in three stages. First, Bennett follows Jackson (1987) in calling the Ramsey Test ‘Adams’ because ‘‘Adams has greatly developed [the Ramsey Test] in the past twenty years’’ (28). He then announces that he intends to strengthen ‘‘the argument from ‘Only Adams’s theory can rescue the Equation’ to ‘‘Adams’s theory is true’’ (77). He finally claims, on the basis of certain arguments relating to the embedding of indicative conditionals, that ‘‘It is hard to avoid the idea that any sound understanding of indicative conditionals will have at its heart the equation, which seems to be tenable only on the basis of Adams’s theory’’ (104). The crucial false step is in associating Ramsey and Adams. The differences between them are more striking than are the similarities. Both are interested in probability – yes. Both are interested in conditional probability – well, yes. But Ramsey is interested almost wholly in subjective conditional probability and he suggests that a speaker’s degrees of belief can be measured by examining that speaker’s betting behaviour. He says: the degree of belief is a causal property of it, which we can express vaguely as the extent to which we are prepared to act on it . . . The old-established way of measuring a person’s belief is to propose a bet, and see what are the lowest odds which he will accept . . . This method I regard as fundamentally sound . . . all our lives we are in a sense betting. Whenever we go to the station we are betting that a train will really run, and if we had not a sufficient degree of belief in this we should decline the bet and stay at home. (Ramsey, 1931: 169, 172, 183) This is quite different from Adams who is principally interested in objective conditional probability. His focus is the obvious fact that premises in an argument are rarely certain and so the conclusion to that argument should not ‘contain’ more uncertainty than that exhibited by the premises. The fundamental difference between these two probabilists is extreme. Adams is himself alert to this possible false step. In a footnote to a paper that Bennett does not reference he says: Though it is off the present topic, I cannot refrain from commenting on another matter related to ‘‘General Propositions and Causality’’. This is the locus classicus of the widely commented on Ramsey Test analysis of conditionals . . ., which some writers have claimed is my own view. . . . This is erroneous. . . . My theory concerns the optimal degrees of belief that should attach to conditionals under various circumstances, and that has nothing at all to do with the mental operations which the thinker may perform in arriving at those beliefs (e.g., imagining adding propositions to his stock of knowledge, as in the Ramsey Test). (Adams, 1988: 67)
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So, on the one hand there is subjective probability in a causal theory of action, on the other, objective probability in a theory of partial deduction. In his account of indicative conditionals, Bennett rests content with the relatively superficial similarities between the two approaches but he fails to detect and discuss these much deeper, and much more important, differences. Let us turn to the third of Bennett’s theses, that the most adequate, indeed, the most elegant, analysis of the counterfactual conditional involves appeal to possible worlds. Bennett is quick to announce his ontological commitments. Possible worlds are not, for him, as they are for Lewis (1973, 1986), real (but alternative) concrete entities: for Bennett a world is . . . an item that may be about such a concrete reality. Such a world, then, must be fit to represent a concrete reality, though only one of them actually does so. Lewis asked how this representing is to be done, and canvassed three answers: worlds represent (1) as sentences do, or (2) as pictures do, or (3) ‘magically’. (156) (3) is so called, by Lewis, because its adherents ‘‘have no account of how their supposed abstract ‘worlds’ can represent concrete realities; so that they should be reduced to confessing that this representation is done by ‘magic’’’ (157). Bennett opts for this ‘magical’ (he calls it ‘abstract’) realism, though he concedes that ‘‘[a]t best I shall come up a somewhat rickety structure . . . There is much more to be said, but this is not the place for it’’ (156, 157). Perhaps one is best advised to put one’s ontological scruples to one side. As far as I can see, this preference for magical realism plays next to no critical role in the rest of the argument. At this point of the tour our guide is at his most rigorous and readers who relish a challenging intellectual work out will enjoy the terrain and Bennett’s route across it. He discusses (a) the Lewis-Stalnaker arguments on single or multiple closest worlds; (b) the nature of the development of time from that signalled by a conditional’s antecedent; (c) the character of ‘forks’, where the development of time can, in effect, take one of several trajectories; (d) the matter of ‘law’ and its relevance to the analysis of counterfactuals; (e) the possibility of ‘miracles’, or deviations from known and accepted laws; and (f) the definition of truth in the actual world, such that it may also be defined derivatively in nonactual worlds. In all of this, Bennett sides with (developments of) Lewisian arguments over the Stalnakerian variants (and the Chisholm and Goodman alternatives). To underscore this intellectual sympathy with Lewis, Chapters 10 through 21 might have had their own section title: ‘What Lewis might have said, but did not’. The argument is careful, the examples are helpful and the conclusions are illuminating. The careful study of these chapters, and frequent reference to the large accompanying literature that Bennett mentions, provides the reader with an exemplary education on a possible worlds analysis of counterfactuals (even though Bennett’s position on magical realism emerges as much more rickety than he appears willing to concede). It is worth noting, also, that possible worlds are enjoying something of a renaissance at the moment and the reader’s education will be further enhanced with reference to Divers (2002) and Girle (2003). Bennett’s fourth thesis is that the two analyses appealing to, on the one hand, conditional probabilities, and, on the other hand, possible worlds, are necessary because indicative and
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counterfactual conditionals are essentially different kinds of objects. This is, in a sense, an unfortunate thesis to advance. As Stalnaker remarks: . . . the parallels [between indicatives and counterfactuals, KPT] are extensive. It is not just that in English, and most if not all other languages, the same words are used in both cases and that many of the same patterns of inference are valid. There are other parallels and connections: open and counterfactual ifs combine with other words – for example with only, even, and might – in the same ways. There is no general agreement about exactly how one should analyze only if, even if, and if. . . might constructions, but the problems such combinations present seem to be independent of whether the conditional is subjunctive or indicative, open or counterfactual. Conditionals of both kinds can be paraphrased in similar ways. Instead of ‘‘if Oswald had not shot Kennedy’’ (or ‘‘if Oswald did not shoot Kennedy’’), I can say ‘‘suppose Oswald had not shot Kennedy’’ (or ‘‘suppose Oswald did not shoot Kennedy’’). Some conditionals are appropriately paraphrased with unless, and these include conditionals of both kinds: ‘‘John would not have come unless Mary had invited him’’ and ‘‘John did not come unless Mary invited him. (Stalnaker, 1984: 111–112) These remarks, and their implications, deserve to be taken seriously. One would not, after all, accept three separate analyses of ice, water and steam. One would seek a single analysis that, when couched in the most appropriate theoretical currency, unified the accounts of these substances. Why, then, accept two analyses for the explanation of ‘if’? Bennett acknowledges that the two kinds of conditional share some features of a common ‘logic’. For example, contraposition, the simplification of disjunctive antecedents, antecedent strengthening and transitivity all fail for both indicative and subjunctive conditionals. But, in spite of this common logical core, Bennett is more impressed by the differences. He notices that indicatives are zero-intolerant; that is to say that ‘‘an indicative conditional is useful, acceptable, worth asserting or at least considering, only to someone who regards its antecedent as having a chance of being true’’ (17). In other words, ‘‘nobody has any use for A ! C when for him P(A) = 0’’ (55, emphasis in the original). This claim is, of course, already embedded, in the form ‘. . . > 0’, both in the Ratio Formula and Equation. Counterfactuals, on the other hand, are zero-tolerant. Their antecedents are, on the whole, false. But they are impossibility-intolerant: In general, A > C (‘>’ is Bennett’s symbol for counterfactual ‘if’ and is not to be confused with the ‘is greater than ‘>’’ in RF and E, KPT) is useless, pointless, out of the arena, if A is intrinsically causally impossible. . . . The impossibility-intolerance of subjunctives is doubly unlike the zero-intolerance of indicatives. The two differ as impossibility from falsehood, and as fact from presupposition. The former concerns what is the case at all causally possible worlds, while the latter concerns what people presuppose about one world, the actual one. (231, emphasis in the original) Bennett underscores the importance of these differences when he says at the very end of his book, against the Unitarians, that ‘‘if we approach the two kinds of conditional wholly in this [unitarian, KPT] manner, we will lose some understanding that we could have had’’ (369). He does not, however, to my notice, examine the nature of that ‘wholly’.
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Finally, there is the ‘classification problem’ of conditionals. At stake here is ‘the relocation thesis’. This thesis states that the proper classification of conditionals does not, as the traditionalists claim, put first and second conditionals, (5) and (6), together, as distinct from third conditionals, (7): )
(5)
If it rains, the streets will get wet.
(6)
If it rained, the streets would get wet.
(7)
If it had rained, the streets would have got wet.
Rather, first and third conditionals are put together and are both distinct from second conditionals: (6)
If it rained, the streets would get wet.
(5)
If it rains, the streets will get wet.
(7)
If it had rained, the streets would have got wet.
)
This relocation thesis has been advanced and defended by Dudman (e.g., 1994, cf. 2001) on the basis that (i) (6) is ambiguous between a past reference (‘Whenever it rained . . .’) and future reference readings; (ii) on a past reference reading (6) may be said to be a proposition and so is truth-evaluable; and (iii) (5) and (7), on the other hand, are projective judgements about possible, but not necessarily guaranteed futures (relative to points of speech and reference). (5) and (7) are not propositions and so are not truth-evaluable. Bennett was once convinced by the relocation thesis and the novel (almost revolutionary, see Dudman, 1989) classification of conditionals that it entails (Bennett, 1988). But he has since moved back in with the traditionalists (Bennett, 1995, 2001). In Chapter 22, which he says contains his ‘‘weightiest original contribution to the understanding of conditionals’’ (vii), he gives a full account of his reasons for his reconversion. To anticipate a little, he argues that ‘‘the relocation thesis is shipwrecked on the facts about bases for indicative conditionals’’ (354). Let us consider the details. The story appears, in part, to be as follows. Bennett first distinguishes (1) ‘A’, the antecedent of a conditional; (2) ‘C’, the consequent of a conditional; (3) ‘E’ (for ‘evidence’), conjoining all that can be believed about particular matters of fact, minimally adjusted to assimilate A; and (4) ‘P’ (for ‘principles’), containing whatever basic doctrine (logic, mathematics, probability theory, knowledge of causality and/or morality) that can be used to infer C from the conjunction of A and E. He adds, rather disappointingly, that in what follows he will be ‘‘silent about P’’ (337). He then asks, with reference to any given conditional: ‘‘What is being thought to explain what?’’ (337) and he is careful to add that all he needs is that ‘‘bases for indicative conditionals often support explanations’’ (337, emphasis in original). He emphatically underscores that he does ‘‘not assert that indicative conditionals are explanations, but only that in many cases the basis for accepting such a conditional includes the makings of an explanation’’ (338, emphasis in original).
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Let us see how this is supposed to work. Consider explaining-C cases. In (8) (8)
(A) If Checkit Inc. conducted the audit, (C) the audit report is accurate.
Bennett says that the speaker’s E includes propositions about the company’s competence and honesty. Thus E, together with A, explains C. Similarly, in (9) (9)
(A) If Stauffenberg used his bomb, (C) Hitler is dead.
the speaker’s E includes propositions about the power of the bomb and the layout of the room. Again, E, together with A, explains C. Bennett adds, somewhat enigmatically Cases will vary in how natural it is to pick on A, rather than on some elements in E, as ‘the explanation’ for C; but I need not go into this. (338) Now consider explaining-A cases. In (10) (10)
(A) If my umbrella is not in the coat closet, (C) then I took it to campus this morning.
the speaker’s E includes the belief that he/she did not bring the umbrella home from campus today. Bennett says ‘‘That combines with C to yield a nice strong explanation for A’’ (338, emphasis added). Bennett adds When you accept a conditional on an explaining-A basis, you can properly use some cognate of ‘must’ in the consequent: ‘If the umbrella is not in the coat-closet, I must have taken it to campus this morning’ . . . This ‘must’ expresses a sense of being forced to accept a C-involving explanation because no other is as good. (339) Now consider explaining-E cases. In (11) (11)
(A) If the umbrella is not in the closet, (C) my memory is failing.
Bennett says that the speaker’s E contains a seeming memory of putting the umbrella in the closet and not a memory of removing it; this could be because the speaker put and left it there; but the hypothesis (A) that it is not there now eliminates that, and the best surviving explanation is (C), that the speaker’s memory is failing. This is, in outline, the kind of story that Bennett advances. With a few more details, which I would like to pass over, relating to different bases for a single conditional and for different speakers, he makes the following diagnosis: Does-will conditionals can have bases of any of the three types; so can indicative conditionals that are not of the Does-will form. The basis for an indicative conditional also supports the corresponding subjunctive if it is of the explaining-A or explaining-C type . . . but not if it is of the explaining-E type. (345) He concludes: The relocation thesis is in trouble right across the range of indicative conditionals, but most acutely with explaining-E Does-wills. Their form is its central topic, yet they refuse to behave as it demands. (348) QED.
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How should this analysis be judged? On the one hand, there is the relocation thesis that takes grammatical considerations into account and concludes that first and third conditionals should be classified together. On the other hand there is the neo-traditionalist thesis that takes ‘explanatory’ considerations into account and concludes that first conditionals belong back with the seconds and separate from the thirds. This is a clever defence of the tradition, but whilst Bennett remains silent on P, the principles that speakers allegedly employ to recruit (parts of) bases to move to other bases, then the jury must remain unconvinced. Bennett has presented a sketch of a defence, but he leaves the most important details entirely out of account. This conclusion should not distract too much from what is hugely useful contribution to the understanding of the analysis of conditionals. Bennett is quite honest about what he has done. He says very early on that ‘‘this book can serve as a guide to as much of the literature as I have been able to understand’’ (vii). But in conjunction with this modesty, he gives pointers to interesting other work, even though he does not discuss it. The reader is thus recommended to leave Bennett’s tour from time to time and explore for him or herself. Bennett notes, for example, that Levi (1996) presents a different account of what Ramsey meant. He adds: ‘‘His formidable work on this topic has defeated me. I hope my main conclusions in this book are not undercut by it’’ (30). Similarly, Bennett hints at Jeffrey’s (1983) work on probability dynamics. He says ‘‘I am awed by this performance’’ (66). He is frank about the route he has taken but generous enough to acknowledge that there are other paths to follow. Adventurous readers are recommended to have this book with them at all times, even though it is conceded that they will depart from it frequently.
References Adams, Ernest, 1965. The logic of conditionals. Inquiry 8, 166–197. Adams, Ernest, 1975. The Logic of Conditionals: An Application of Probability to Deductive Logic. Reidel, Dordrecht. Adams, Ernest, 1988. Consistency and decision: variations on Ramseyan themes. In: Harper, W.L., Skyrms, B. (Eds.), Causation in Decision, Belief Change, and Statistics. Proceedings of the Irvine Conference on Probability and Causation, vol. II. Kluwer Academic Publishers, London, pp. 49–69. Adams, Ernest, 1998. A Primer of Probability Logic. CSLI Publications, Stanford. Bennett, Jonathan, 1988. Farewell to the phlogiston theory of conditionals. Mind 97, 509–527. Bennett, Jonathan, 1995. Classifying conditionals: the traditional way is right. Mind 104, 331–354. Bennett, Jonathan, 2001. On forward and backward counterfactual conditionals. In: Preyer, G., Siebelt, F. (Eds.), Reality and Humean Supervenience: Essays on the Philosophy of David Lewis. Rowman and Littlefield, Oxford, pp. 177–202. Davis, Wayne A., 1979. Indicative and subjunctive conditionals. Philosophical Review 88, 544–564. Divers, John, 2002. Possible Worlds. Routledge, London. Dudman, Victor, 1989. Vive la Re´volution! Mind 98, 591–603. Dudman, Victor, 1994. On conditionals. Journal of Philosophy 91, 113–128. Dudman, Victor, 2001. Three twentieth-century commonplaces about ‘if’. History and Philosophy of Logic 22, 119–127. Edgington, Dorothy, 1986. Do conditionals have truth conditions? Critica 18, 3–39. Edgington, Dorothy, 1995a. On conditionals. Mind 104, 235–329. Edgington, Dorothy, 1995b. Conditionals and the Ramsey Test. The Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume LXIV, 67–86.
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Girle, Rod, 2003. Possible Worlds. Acumen, Chesham. Grice, Paul, 1989. Studies in the Way of Words. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Ha´jek, Alan, 2003a. What conditional probability could not be. Synthese 137, 273–323. Ha´jek, Alan, 2003b. Conditional probability is the very guide of life. In: Kyburg, Jr., H.E., Thalos, M. (Eds.), Probability is the Very Guide of Life: The Philosophical Uses of Chance. Open Court, Chicago and La Salle, IL, pp. 183–203. Jackson, Frank, 1987. Conditionals. Blackwell, Oxford. Jeffrey, Richard, 1983. The Logic of Decision, second ed. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Levi, Isaac, 1996. For the Sake of the Argument: Ramsey Test Conditionals, Inductive Inference, and Nonmonotonic Reasoning. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Lewis, David, 1973. Counterfactuals. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Lewis, David, 1986. On the Plurality of Worlds. Basil Blackwell, Oxford. Ramsey, Frank, 1931. Truth and probability. In: Braithwaite, R.B. (Ed.), The Foundations of Mathematics and other Logical Essays. Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd, London (Preface by G.E. Moore), pp. 156–198. Read, Stephen, 1995. Conditionals and the Ramsey Test, The Aristotelian Society Supplementary, vol. LXIV, 47–65. Stalnaker, Robert, 1970. Probability and conditionals. Philosophy of Science 37, 64–80. Stalnaker, Robert, 1984. Inquiry. MIT Press, London. Thomson, James, 1990. In defense of ‘’. Journal of Philosophy 87, 57–70. Ken Turner is senior lecturer in linguistics with special reference to the philosophy of language in the School of Languages at the University of Brighton. He has previously held appointments in the Department of Linguistics and Modern English Language at the University of Lancaster and in the School of Cognitive and Computing Studies at the University of Sussex. His principal research interests are in semantics and pragmatics and in pursuit of these interests he (a) has co-organised the International Conferences on Contrastive Semantics and Pragmatics (University of Brighton, 1995; University of Cambridge, 2000; Shanghai International Studies University, 2005); (b) has co-organised the Where Semantics meets Pragmatics workshop (Michigan State University, 2003) and (c) acts as series co-editor for Current Research in the Semantics/Pragmatics Interface (CRiSPI), published with Elsevier Science. The first volume of this series was his The Semantics/Pragmatics Interface from Different Points of View (1999). He has published widely on semantic and pragmatic themes, including editing or co-editing special issues of Language Sciences (1996), the Journal of Pragmatics (2002), the International Journal of Pragmatics (2003) and Acta Linguistica Hafniensia (anticipated in 2006). He is currently preparing a monograph on conditionals.
Ken Turner* School of Languages, University of Brighton Falmer, Brighton, East Sussex BN1 9PH, UK *Tel.: +44 1273 643345 fax: +44 1273 690710 E-mail address:[email protected] 1 February 2005