•  647
    Cancellation, Negation, and Rejection
    with Niels Skovgaard-Olsen, Peter Collins, Ulrike Hahn, and Karl Christoph Klauer
    Cognitive Psychology 108 42-71. 2019.
    In this paper, new evidence is presented for the assumption that the reason-relation reading of indicative conditionals ('if A, then C') reflects a conventional implicature. In four experiments, it is investigated whether relevance effects found for the probability assessment of indicative conditionals (Skovgaard-Olsen, Singmann, and Klauer, 2016a) can be classified as being produced by a) a conversational implicature, b) a (probabilistic) presupposition failure, or c) a conventional implicature…Read more
  •  114
    We explore the prospects of a monist account of explanation for both non-causal explanations in science and pure mathematics. Our starting point is the counterfactual theory of explanation for explanations in science, as advocated in the recent literature on explanation. We argue that, despite the obvious differences between mathematical and scientific explanation, the CTE can be extended to cover both non-causal explanations in science and mathematical explanations. In particular, a successful …Read more
  •  90
    Belief ascription and the Ramsey test
    Synthese 190 (1): 21-36. 2013.
    In this paper, I analyse a finding by Riggs and colleagues that there is a close connection between people’s ability to reason with counterfactual conditionals and their capacity to attribute false beliefs to others. The result indicates that both processes may be governed by one cognitive mechanism, though false belief attribution seems to be slightly more cognitively demanding. Given that the common denominator for both processes is suggested to be a form of the Ramsey test, I investigate whet…Read more
  •  88
    Inferential Conditionals and Evidentiality
    Journal of Logic, Language and Information 22 (3): 315-334. 2013.
    Many conditionals seem to convey the existence of a link between their antecedent and consequent. We draw on a recently proposed typology of conditionals to argue for an old philosophical idea according to which the link is inferential in nature. We show that the proposal has explanatory force by presenting empirical results on the evidential meaning of certain English and Dutch modal expressions
  •  81
    Rethinking Gibbard’s Riverboat Argument
    Studia Logica 102 (4): 771-792. 2014.
    According to the Principle of Conditional Non-Contradiction (CNC), conditionals of the form “If p, q” and “If p, not q” cannot both be true, unless p is inconsistent. This principle is widely regarded as an adequacy constraint on any semantics that attributes truth conditions to conditionals. Gibbard has presented an example of a pair of conditionals that, in the context he describes, appear to violate CNC. He concluded from this that conditionals lack truth conditions. We argue that this conclu…Read more
  •  58
    Ambiguous Conditionals
    In Piotr Stalmaszczyk (ed.), Philosophical and Formal Approaches to Linguistic Analysis, Ontos. pp. 315-332. 2011.
    According to the Principle of Conditional Non-Contradiction (CNC), unless p is impossible, conditionals “If p, then q” and “If p, then not q” are jointly inconsistent. Although intuitively appealing, CNC gives rise to serious problems that semantic theories of conditionals validating it have to face. Most notably, an example of violation of CNC, as presented by Allan Gibbard, may lead to the conclusion that conditionals do not express propositions at all. In the preset paper we propose a new an…Read more
  •  46
    Conditionals, inference, and evidentiality
    with Sylvia Wenmackers, Igor Douven, and Sara Verbrugge
    Proceedings of the Logic and Cognition Workshop at ESSLLI 2012; Opole, Poland, 13-17 August, 2012 - Vol. 883 of CEUR Workshop Proceedings. 2012.
    At least many conditionals seem to convey the existence of a link between their antecedent and consequent. We draw on a recently proposed typology of conditionals to revive an old philosophical idea according to which the link is inferential in nature. We show that the proposal has explanatory force by presenting empirical results on two Dutch linguistic markers.
  •  33
    Reasoning with conditionals is central to everyday life, yet there is long-standing disagreement about the meaning of the conditional. One example is the puzzle of so-called missing-link conditionals such as "if raccoons have no wings, they cannot breathe under water." Their oddity may be taken to show that conditionals require a connection between antecedent ("raccoons have no wings") and consequent ("they cannot breathe under water"), yet most accounts of conditionals attribute the oddity to n…Read more
  •  29
    Conditionals and Testimony
    with Stephan Hartmann, Peter J. Collins, Gregory Wheeler, and Ulrike Hahn
    Cognitive Psychology 122. 2020.
    Conditionals and conditional reasoning have been a long-standing focus of research across a number of disciplines, ranging from psychology through linguistics to philosophy. But almost no work has concerned itself with the question of how hearing or reading a conditional changes our beliefs. Given that we acquire much—perhaps most—of what we believe through the testimony of others, the simple matter of acquiring conditionals via others’ assertion of a conditional seems integral to any full under…Read more
  •  29
    Deliberationally useless conditionals
    Episteme 17 (1): 1-27. 2020.
    Decision theorists tend to treat indicative conditionals with reservation, because they can easily lead a deliberating agent astray. However, many indicatives can be very helpful in contexts of deliberation, so denying them all a role in such contexts seems to be overkill. We show that a recently revived inferential view on conditionals provides a straightforward explanation of why some indicatives are unassertable in contexts of deliberation and hints at a way of telling "deliberationally usele…Read more
  •  23
    InSuppose and Tell, Williamson makes a new and original attempt to defend the material conditional account of indicative conditionals. His overarching argument is that this account offers the best explanation of the data concerning how people evaluate and use such conditionals. We argue that Williamson overlooks several important alternative explanations, some of which appear to explain the relevant data at least as well as, or even better than, the material conditional account does. Along the w…Read more
  •  13
    Williamson on conditionals and testimony
    Philosophical Studies 180 (1): 121-131. 2022.
    In _Suppose and Tell_, Williamson makes a new case for the material conditional account. He tries to explain away apparently countervailing data by arguing that these have been misinterpreted because researchers have overlooked the role of heuristics in the processing of conditionals. Cases involving the receipt of apparently conflicting conditionals play an important dialectical role in Williamson’s book: they are supposed to provide evidence for the material conditional account as well as for …Read more
  • Sprawozdania z przekonań w perspektywie filozofii języka i kognitywistyki
    Przeglad Filozoficzny - Nowa Seria 75 297-319. 2010.
    Zdania o przekonaniach nurtują filozofów od samego początku filozofii analitycznej. Wszystkie próby ujęcia języka naturalnego w ramy kompozycyjnej semantyki muszą się zmierzyć z generowanymi przez sprawozdania z przekonań łamigłówkami. Obecne w tradycji filozoficznej teorie nie tylko borykają się z różnymi problemami, ale ponadto nie uwzględniają psychologicznych aspektów przypisywania przekonań innym. W artykule formułuję postulaty, które psychologicznie adekwatna teoria powinna uwzględniać, a …Read more