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Timothy Williamson - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Conditionals, Paradox, and Probability - Edgington on Possible Knowledge of Unknown Truth
Conditionals Paradox and Probability, 2021Co-Authors: Timothy WilliamsonAbstract:The chapter responds to Dorothy Edgington’s article ‘Possible Knowledge of Unknown Truth’, which defends her seminal diagnosis of the Church–Fitch refutation of verificationist knowability principles. Using Counterfactual Conditionals, she reformulates those principles to block that objection. The chapter argues that, to avoid trivialization, Edgington must supply a more general constraint on how the knower specifies a Counterfactual situation for purposes of her reformulated principles; it is unclear how to do so. The philosophical motivation for her strategy is also questioned, with special reference to her treatment of Putnam’s epistemic account of truth. In passing, it is questioned how dangerous Church–Fitch arguments are for verificationist principles with non-factive evidential attitudes in place of knowledge. Finally, a doubt is raised about the compatibility of Edgington’s reformulation strategy with her view that Counterfactual Conditionals lack truth-conditions.
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Suppose and Tell - The Interaction of ‘If’ and ‘Would’: Semantics and Logic
Suppose and Tell, 2020Co-Authors: Timothy WilliamsonAbstract:This chapter argues that the difference between indicative and Counterfactual Conditionals traces to the overt difference in verb forms and not to any alleged covert ambiguity or context-dependence in ‘if’. ‘Would’ has a life beyond Conditionals; the best hypothesis is that it is a necessity modal restricted to contextually relevant worlds. In standard Counterfactual Conditionals, ‘would’ scopes over ‘if’; given the invariant truth-functional semantics of ‘if’, the compositional semantics then makes Counterfactual Conditionals contextually restricted strict Conditionals. The chapter explores the consequences of this for the logic of Counterfactuals: principles such as transitivity, contraposition, and strengthening the antecedent hold, with appearances to the contrary being explained by context-shifting caused by the application of the suppositional heuristic. However, modus ponens fails because the contextual restriction may exclude the actual world.
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1 Edgington on Possible Knowledge of Unknown Truth1
2016Co-Authors: Lee Walters, Timothy WilliamsonAbstract:Abstract: The paper is a response to Dorothy Edgington’s article ‘Possible knowledge of unknown truth ’ (Synthese, 2010), where she defends her diagnosis of the Church-Fitch refutation of the principle that all truths are knowable and analogous refutations of analogous principles, in response to my earlier criticisms of her diagnosis. Using Counterfactual Conditionals, she reformulates the knowability principle and its analogues to withstand Church-Fitch objection. In the present paper, I argue that in order to avoid a kind of trivialization, Edgington needs to supply a more general constraint on how the knower is allowed to specify a Counterfactual situation for the purposes of her reformulated principles, and that it is unclear how to do so. I also question the philosophical motivation for her reformulation strategy, with special reference to her application of it to Putnam’s epistemic account of truth. In passing, I question how dangerous Church-Fitch arguments are for analogues of the knowability principle with non-factive evidential attitudes in place of knowledge. Finally, I raise a doubt about the compatibility of Edgington’s reformulation strategy with her view that Counterfactual Conditionals lack truth-conditions. 2 1. Many philosophers have been tempted by something like the idea that all truths are knowable. The idea is naturally formalized thus
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PHILOSOPHICAL KNOWLEDGE AND KNOWLEDGE OF CounterfactualS
Grazer Philosophische Studien, 2007Co-Authors: Timothy WilliamsonAbstract:Metaphysical modalities are definable from Counterfactual Conditionals, and the epistemology of the former is a special case of the epistemology of the latter. In particular, the role of conceivability and inconceivability in assessing claims of possibility and impossibility can be explained as a special case of the pervasive role of the imagination in assessing Counterfactual Conditionals, an account of which is sketched. Thus scepticism about metaphysical modality entails a more far-reaching scepticism about Counterfactuals. The account is used to question the significance of the distinction between a priori and a posteriori knowledge.
Marc Lange - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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A Counterfactual Analysis of the Concepts of Logical Truth and Necessity
Philosophical Studies, 2005Co-Authors: Marc LangeAbstract:This paper analyzes the logical truths as (very roughly) those truths that would still have been true under a certain range of Counterfactual perturbations.What’s nice is that the relevant range is characterized without relying (overtly, at least) upon the notion of logical truth. This approach suggests a conception of necessity that explains what the different varieties of necessity (logical, physical, etc.) have in common, in virtue of which they are all varieties of necessity. However, this approach places the Counterfactual Conditionals in an unfamiliar foundational role.
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INDUCTIVE CONFIRMATION, Counterfactual Conditionals, AND LAWS OF NATURE
Philosophical Studies, 1996Co-Authors: Marc LangeAbstract:Examinant la these de l'exclusivite inductive concernant la confirmation d'une hypothese dans les cas actuels comme les cas contrefactuels, l'A. etudie le role de l'affirmation de la loi naturelle dans les generalisations du type de la loi et dans les generalisations accidentelles, ainsi que dans la reconstruction rationnelle de la science en general
Ruth M. J. Byrne - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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The Suppression of Inferences From Counterfactual Conditionals
Cognitive science, 2020Co-Authors: Orlando Espino, Ruth M. J. ByrneAbstract:We examine two competing effects of beliefs on conditional inferences. The suppression effect occurs for Conditionals, for example, "if she watered the plants they bloomed," when beliefs about additional background conditions, for example, "if the sun shone they bloomed" decrease the frequency of inferences such as modus tollens (from "the plants did not bloom" to "therefore she did not water them"). In contrast, the Counterfactual elevation effect occurs for Counterfactual Conditionals, for example, "if she had watered the plants they would have bloomed," when beliefs about the known or presupposed facts, "she did not water the plants and they did not bloom" increase the frequency of inferences such as modus tollens. We report six experiments that show that beliefs about additional conditions take precedence over beliefs about presupposed facts for Counterfactuals. The modus tollens inference is suppressed for Counterfactuals that contain additional conditions (Experiments 1a and 1b). The denial of the antecedent inference (from "she did not water the plants" to "therefore they did not bloom") is suppressed for Counterfactuals that contain alternatives (Experiments 2a and 2b). We report a new "switched-suppression" effect for Conditionals with negated components, for example, "if she had not watered the plants they would not have bloomed": modus tollens is suppressed by alternatives and denial of the antecedent by additional conditions, rather than vice versa (Experiments 3a and 3b). We discuss the implications of the results for alternative theories of conditional reasoning.
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Thinking About the Opposite of What Is Said: Counterfactual Conditionals and Symbolic or Alternate Simulations of Negation.
Cognitive science, 2018Co-Authors: Orlando Espino, Ruth M. J. ByrneAbstract:When people understand a Counterfactual such as "if the flowers had been roses, the trees would have been orange trees," they think about the conjecture, "there were roses and orange trees," and they also think about its opposite, the presupposed facts. We test whether people think about the opposite by representing alternates, for example, "poppies and apple trees," or whether models can contain symbols, for example, "no roses and no orange trees." We report the discovery of an inference-to-alternates effect-a tendency to make an affirmative inference that refers to an alternate even from a negative minor premise, for example, "there were no orange trees, therefore there were poppies." Nine experiments show the inference-to-alternates effect occurs in a binary context, but not a multiple context, and for direct and indirect reference; it can be induced and reduced by prior experience with similar inferences, and it also occurs for indicative Conditionals. The results have implications for theories of Counterfactual Conditionals, and of negation.
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Counterfactual 'if only' Conditionals
2009Co-Authors: Ruth M. J. Byrne, James Dixon, Robert GuttentagAbstract:Counterfactual ’if only’ Conditionals James Dixon Trinity College, Dublin University Robert Guttentag University of Northern Carolina, Greensboro Ruth M. J. Byrne Trinity College, Dublin University Abstract: We report the results of two experiments that compare if and if only Counterfactual Conditionals. We propose that if only Counterfactual Conditionals, e.g., if only Mary had gone to Dublin, then Paul would have gone to Cork emphasise their Counterfactual nature - their conjecture is contrary to the presupposed facts (Mary did not go to Dublin and Paul did not go to Cork), even more so than a Counterfactual conditional based on if alone. In Experiment 1 (n = 36), participants made more of the inferences that relied on the presupposed facts (e.g., Paul did not go to Cork, therefore Mary did not go to Dublin) from subjunctive if only compared to subjunctive if and indicative if. In Experiment 2 (n = 156) participants judged that conjunctions based on the presupposed facts (e.g., Mary did not go to Dublin and Paul did not go to Cork) were consistent with subjunctive if only more often than they did so for subjunctive if and indicative if. The implications of the results for theories of the mental representations of Counterfactual Conditionals are discussed.
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Paraphrases of Counterfactual and Causal Conditionals
2005Co-Authors: Ruth M. J. Byrne, Caren A. FroschAbstract:Paraphrases of Counterfactual and Causal Conditionals Caren A. Frosch (froschc@tcd.ie) Ruth M.J. Byrne (rmbyrne@tcd.ie) Psychology Department, University of Dublin, Trinity College. Dublin 2, Ireland constructions (see Table 1). There were few systematic differences between the different types of causal relations. Introduction Counterfactual Conditionals seem to be understood differently from factual Conditionals. People may understand a factual conditional, e.g., ‘if Joe cut his finger it bled’ by initially envisaging just one true possibility, ‘Joe cut his finger and it bled’ (Johnson-Laird & Byrne, 1991; 2002). Counterfactual Conditionals are different. People understand a Counterfactual, e.g., ‘if Joe had cut his finger it would have bled’ by keeping in mind several possibilities. They think about the conjecture ‘Joe cut his finger and it bled’ and about the presupposed facts, ‘Joe did not cut his finger and it did not bleed’ (Byrne & Tasso, 1999). Causal relations are often expressed in conditional ‘if’ assertions. There are different sorts of causal relations, such as strong ones, e.g., ‘if Joe cut his finger it bled’, weak ones, e.g., ‘if the apples were ripe they fell off the tree’, and enabling ones, e.g., ‘if the ignition key was turned the car started’. People think about different sorts of possibilities when they understand them (Goldvarg & Johnson-Laird, 2001). Our aim was to examine whether people form different mental representations of factual and Counterfactual Conditionals, and different representations of strong, weak, and enabling causal relations. Table 1: Percentages of each type of paraphrase as a function of type of conditional, factual or Counterfactual Connective Results The results of both experiments showed that factual Conditionals tended to be paraphrased most often by temporal connectives and Counterfactuals by subjunctive Experiment 2 Factual Counterfactual Discussion Experiments Participants were asked to paraphrase conditional assertions without using ‘if’ (24 Conditionals in experiment 1 and 12 in experiment 2). A conditional, e.g., ‘if Joe cut his finger then it bled’, can be paraphrased in several ways, e.g., ‘Joe’s finger bled when he cut it’, ‘Joe cut his finger and then it bled’, or ‘cutting Joe’s finger caused it to bleed’. Counterfactual The two experiments show that people paraphrase factual and Counterfactual Conditionals by using different sorts of connectives. The data provide some support for the idea that people mentally represent factual Conditionals by keeping in mind a single possibility (and so they use temporal connectives that refer to a single possibility); people mentally represent Counterfactual Conditionals by keeping in mind several possibilities (and so they use subjunctive constructions that capture several possibilities). Their mental representation of causal relations appears to be influenced primarily by the conditional that expresses the causal relation, i.e., whether it is factual or Counterfactual. In two experiments we compared factual and Counterfactual Conditionals that expressed strong, weak, and enabling causal relations. In both experiments we relied on the sorts of paraphrases people produced as an indicator of the sorts of mental representations they formed (Fillenbaum, 1974). In the second experiment we provided a context to emphasise the different types of causal relations. Method Experiment 1 Factual Temporal Causal Conjunctive Conditional Subjunctive Acknowledgments This research was funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences major research grants. References Byrne, R. M. J., & Tasso, A. (1999). Deductive reasoning with factual, possible, and Counterfactual Conditionals. Memory and Cognition, 27 (4), 726-740. Fillenbaum, S. (1974). Pragmatic Normalization: Further Results For Some Conjunctive And Disjunctive Sentences. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 102 (4), Goldvarg, E., & Johnson-Laird, P. N. (2001). Naive causality: a mental model theory of causal meaning and reasoning. Cognitive Science, 25, 565-610. Johnson-Laird, P. N., & Byrne, R. M. J. (1991). Deduction. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Johnson-Laird, P. N., & Byrne, R. M. J. (2002). Conditionals: A theory of meaning, pragmatics, and inferences. Psychological Review, 109 (4), 646-678.
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Reasoning with deontic and Counterfactual Conditionals
Thinking & Reasoning, 2003Co-Authors: Ana Cristina Quelhas, Ruth M. J. ByrneAbstract:We report two new phenomena of deontic reasoning: (1) For Conditionals with deontic content such as, “If the nurse cleaned up the blood then she must have worn rubber gloves”, reasoners make more modus tollens inferences (from “she did not wear rubber gloves” to “she did not clean up the blood”) compared to Conditionals with epistemic content. (2) For Conditionals in the subjunctive mood with deontic content, such as, “If the nurse had cleaned up the blood then she must have had to wear rubber gloves”, reasoners make the same frequency of all inferences as they do for Conditionals in the indicative mood with deontic content. In this regard, subjunctive deontics are different from subjunctive epistemic Conditionals: reasoners interpret subjunctive epistemic Conditionals as Counterfactual and they make more negative inferences such as modus tollens from them. The experiments show these two phenomena occur for deontic Conditionals that contain the modal auxiliary “must” and ones that do not. We discuss the results in terms of the mental representations of deontic Conditionals and of Counterfactual Conditionals. Most research on conditional inference has focused on Conditionals in the indicative mood about factual possibilities, e.g., “if the woman washed the dishes
Carlo Alberto Magni - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Opportunity Cost, Excess Profit, and Counterfactual Conditionals
2009Co-Authors: Carlo Alberto MagniAbstract:Counterfactual Conditionals are cognitive tools that we incessantly use during our lives for judgments, evaluations, decisions. Counterfactuals are used for defining concepts as well; an instance of this is attested by the notions of opportunity cost and excess profit (residual income), two all-pervasive notions of economics: They are defined by undoing a given scenario and constructing a suitable Counterfactual milieu. Focussing on the standard paradigm and Magni's (2000, 2005, 2009a,b) proposal this paper shows that the formal translation of the Counterfactual state is not univocal and that Magni's model retains formal properties of symmetry, additive coherence, homeomorphism, which correspond to properties of frame-independence, time invariance, completeness. Two introductory studies are also presented to illustrate how people cope with these Counterfactuals and ascertain whether either model is seen as more "natural". A brief discussion of the results obtained is also provided.
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Opportunity cost, excess profit, and Counterfactual Conditionals
2003Co-Authors: Carlo Alberto MagniAbstract:Counterfactual Conditionals are cognitive tools that we incessantly use during our lives for judgments, evaluations, decisions. Counterfactuals are used for defining concepts as well; an instance of this is attested by the notions of opportunity cost and excess profit, two all-pervasive notions of economics: They are defined by undoing a given scenario and constructing a suitable Counterfactual milieu. Focussing on the standard paradigm and Magni’s (2000, 2005, 2006) proposal this paper shows that the formal translation of the Counterfactual state is not univocal and that Magni’s model retains formal properties of symmetry, additive coherence, homeomorphism, which correspond to properties of frame-independence, time invariance, completeness. Two introductory studies are also presented to illustrate how people cope with these Counterfactuals and ascertain whether either model is seen as more “natural”. A brief discussion of the results obtained is also provided.
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Opportunity cost, excess profit and Counterfactual Conditionals
2003Co-Authors: Carlo Alberto MagniAbstract:Counterfactual Conditionals are cognitive tools that we incessantly use during our lives for judgments, evaluations, decisions. Counterfactuals are used for defining concepts as well; an instance of this is attested by the notions of opportunity cost and excess profit, two all-pervasive notions of economics: They are defined by undoing a given scenario and constructing a suitable Counterfactual milieu. Focussing on the standard paradigm [Peasnell, 1981, 1982; Peccati, 1987, 1990, 1991; Ohlson, 1995] and Magni’s [2000, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006] alternative paradigm this paper shows that the formal translation of the Counterfactual state is not univocal and that Magni’s approach retains formal properties of symmetry, additive coherence, homeomorphism, which correspond to properties of frame-independence, time invariance, completeness. Two introductory studies are also presented to illustrate how people cope with these Counterfactuals and ascertain whether either model is seen as more “natural”. A brief discussion of the results obtained is also provided.
Ana Cristina Quelhas - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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The Relation Between Factual and Counterfactual Conditionals.
Cognitive science, 2018Co-Authors: Ana Cristina Quelhas, Célia Rasga, Philip N. Johnson-lairdAbstract:What is the relation between factual Conditionals: If A happened then B happened, and Counterfactual Conditionals: If A had happened then B would have happened? Some theorists propose quite different semantics for the two. In contrast, the theory of mental models and its computer implementation interrelates them. It postulates that both can have a priori truth values, and that the semantic bases of both are possibilities: states that are possible for factual Conditionals, and that were once possible but that did not happen for Counterfactual Conditionals. Two experiments supported these relations. Experiment 1 showed that, like factual Conditionals, certain Counterfactuals are true a priori, and others are false a priori. Experiment 2 replicated this result and showed that participants selected appropriate paraphrases, referring, respectively, to real and to Counterfactual possibilities, for the two sorts of conditional. These results are contrary to alternative accounts of Conditionals.
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Reasoning with "Unless" Counterfactual Conditionals
Psicologica, 2009Co-Authors: Juan A. García-madruga, Ana Cristina Quelhas, Sergio Moreno-ríos, Csongor JuhosAbstract:This article tackles factual and Counterfactual ‘unless’ expressions such as ‘Virginia will not pass the exam unless she works harder’ and ‘Virginia would not have passed the exam unless she had worked harder’. ‘Unless’ is a negative conditional that is semantically equivalent to ‘if not’. However, some authors have claimed that ‘unless’ is more closely related to ‘only if’ than to ‘if not’. We report two experiments that compare conditional inferences from ‘unless’ to 'if-not'’ and ‘only if’ factual and Counterfactual Conditionals. The first experiment compared ‘not-A unless B’ and ‘if not-B then not-A’ and showed a difference between affirmative (i.e. B therefore A, A therefore B) and negative (i.e. not-B therefore not-A, not-A therefore notB) inferences only for factual ‘if not’. The second experiment compared ‘not-A unless B’ and ‘A only if B’ and showed no difference between affirmative and negative inferences for factual ‘unless’ and ‘only if’, whereas the affirmative inferences were higher for Counterfactual ‘unless’ and ‘only if’. In both experiments latency results confirmed that inferences from ‘B to A’ were faster than from ‘A to B’ for ‘unless’ and ‘only if’. The implications of the results for the mental representations and processing of Counterfactual ‘unless’, ‘if not’ and ‘only if’ are discussed in the context of mental model theory.
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Reasoning with deontic and Counterfactual Conditionals
Thinking & Reasoning, 2003Co-Authors: Ana Cristina Quelhas, Ruth M. J. ByrneAbstract:We report two new phenomena of deontic reasoning: (1) For Conditionals with deontic content such as, “If the nurse cleaned up the blood then she must have worn rubber gloves”, reasoners make more modus tollens inferences (from “she did not wear rubber gloves” to “she did not clean up the blood”) compared to Conditionals with epistemic content. (2) For Conditionals in the subjunctive mood with deontic content, such as, “If the nurse had cleaned up the blood then she must have had to wear rubber gloves”, reasoners make the same frequency of all inferences as they do for Conditionals in the indicative mood with deontic content. In this regard, subjunctive deontics are different from subjunctive epistemic Conditionals: reasoners interpret subjunctive epistemic Conditionals as Counterfactual and they make more negative inferences such as modus tollens from them. The experiments show these two phenomena occur for deontic Conditionals that contain the modal auxiliary “must” and ones that do not. We discuss the results in terms of the mental representations of deontic Conditionals and of Counterfactual Conditionals. Most research on conditional inference has focused on Conditionals in the indicative mood about factual possibilities, e.g., “if the woman washed the dishes
