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20Bernoulli Semantics and Ordinal Semantics for ConditionalsJournal of Philosophical Logic 52 (1): 199-220. 2023.Conditionals with conditional constituents pose challenges for _the Thesis_, the idea that the probability of a conditional is the corresponding conditional probability. This note is concerned with two proposals for overcoming those challenges, both inspired by early work of van Fraassen: the _Bernoulli Semantics_ associated with Stalnaker and Jeffrey, and augmented with a mechanism for obtaining “local probabilities” by Kaufmann; and a proposal by Bacon which I dub _Ordinal Semantics_. Despite …Read more
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9Conditionals: Logic, Linguistics and Psychology (edited book)Palgrave-Macmillan. 2022.This edited book examines conditionals from a number of interdisciplinary perspectives, drawing on research from fields as diverse as linguistics, psychology, philosophy and logic. Across 13 chapters, the authors not only investigate and examine various commonly-held perceptions about conditionals, but they also challenge many of the assumptions underpinning current conditionals scholarship, setting an agenda for future research. Based in part on the papers presented at a unique international su…Read more
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6Gesundheit aus Sicht der Immunologie und Infektionsbiologie: Neun Chancen für die ZukunftIn Philip Eijk, Detlev Ganten & Roman Marek (eds.), Was Ist Gesundheit?: Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven Aus Medizin, Geschichte Und Kultur, De Gruyter. pp. 260-290. 2021.
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15Formalizing the Dynamics of InformationCenter for the Study of Language and Information Publications. 2000.The papers collected in this volume exemplify some of the trends in current approaches to logic, language and computation. Written by authors with varied academic backgrounds, the contributions are intended for an interdisciplinary audience. The first part of this volume addresses issues relevant for multi-agent systems: reasoning with incomplete information, reasoning about knowledge and beliefs, and reasoning about games. Proofs as formal objects form the subject of Part II. Topics covered inc…Read more
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Aspects of the Meaning and Use of ConditionalsDissertation, Stanford University. 2002.Conditional sentences pose a problem for semantic accounts in terms of truth conditions. On the one hand, evidence about the validity of inference patterns suggests that there is a close relationship between conditionals and conditional probability. On the other hand, while probability is typically interpreted as the probability that a proposition is true, that connection has proven elusive in the case of conditionals. Some probabilistic accounts accommodate these obstacles by concluding either …Read more
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14Modality and temporalityJournal of Semantics 22 (2): 119-128. 2005.The present collection addresses a number of issues in the semantic interpretation of modal and temporal expressions. Despite the variety the papers exhibit both in the selection of topics and the choice of formal frameworks, they are interconnected through several overarching themes that are at the centre of much ongoing research. The purpose of this brief introduction is to put the papers into context and draw the reader's attention to some of these connections. The topics we will discuss in t…Read more
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30Conditionals and ModalityIn Shalom Lappin & Chris Fox (eds.), Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 237-270. 1996.
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10Towards a Probabilistic Analysis for Conditionals and UnconditionalsIn Otake Mihoko, Kurahashi Setsuya, Satoh Yuiko OtaKen & Bekki Daisuke (eds.), New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, Springer. pp. 3-14. 2017.The thesis that the probability of a conditional`if A, C' is the corresponding conditional probability of C, given A, enjoys wide currency among philosophers and growing empirical support in psychology. In this paper I ask how a probabilisitic account of conditionals along these lines could be extended to unconditional sentences, i.e., conditionals with interrogative antecedents. Such sentences are typically interpreted as equivalent to conjunctions of conditionals. This raises a number of chall…Read more
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20Conditionals, Conditional Probabilities, and ConditionalizationIn Hans-Christian Schmitz & Henk Zeevat (eds.), Bayesian Natural Language Semantics and Pragmatics, Springer. pp. 71-94. 2015.Philosophers investigating the interpretation and use of conditional sentences have long been intrigued by the intuitive correspondence between the probability of a conditional `if A, then C' and the conditional probability of C, given A. Attempts to account for this intuition within a general probabilistic theory of belief, meaning and use have been plagued by a danger of trivialization, which has proven to be remarkably recalcitrant and absorbed much of the creative effort in the area. But the…Read more
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14Conditioning against the grainJournal of Philosophical Logic 33 (6): 583-606. 2004.This paper discusses counterexamples to the thesis that the probabilities of conditionals are conditional probabilities. It is argued that the discrepancy is systematic and predictable, and that conditional probabilities are crucially involved in the apparently deviant interpretations. Furthermore, the examples suggest that such conditionals have a less prominent reading on which their probability is in fact the conditional probability, and that the two readings are related by a simple step of a…Read more
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14Conditional predictionsLinguistics and Philosophy 28 (2). 2005.The connection between the probabilities of conditionals and the corresponding conditional probabilities has long been explored in the philosophical literature, but its implementation faces both technical obstacles and objections on empirical grounds. In this paper I ?rst outline the motivation for the probabilistic turn and Lewis’ triviality results, which stand in the way of what would seem to be its most straightforward implementation. I then focus on Richard Jeffrey’s ’random-variable’ appro…Read more
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7Conditionals Right and Left: Probabilities for the Whole FamilyJournal of Philosophical Logic 38 (1): 1-53. 2009.The fact that the standard probabilistic calculus does not define probabilities for sentences with embedded conditionals is a fundamental problem for the probabilistic theory of conditionals. Several authors have explored ways to assign probabilities to such sentences, but those proposals have come under criticism for making counterintuitive predictions. This paper examines the source of the problematic predictions and proposes an amendment which corrects them in a principled way. The account br…Read more
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7Tracing semantic change with latent semantic analysisIn Kathryn Allan & Justyna A. Robinson (eds.), Current Methods in Historical Semantics, De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 73--161. 2011.
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17Causal Explanation and Fact Mutability in Counterfactual ReasoningMind and Language 27 (1): 55-85. 2012.Recent work on the interpretation of counterfactual conditionals has paid much attention to the role of causal independencies. One influential idea from the theory of Causal Bayesian Networks is that counterfactual assumptions are made by intervention on variables, leaving all of their causal non-descendants unaffected. But intervention is not applicable across the board. For instance, backtracking counterfactuals, which involve reasoning from effects to causes, cannot proceed by intervention in…Read more
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17Causal Premise SemanticsCognitive Science 37 (6): 1136-1170. 2013.The rise of causality and the attendant graph-theoretic modeling tools in the study of counterfactual reasoning has had resounding effects in many areas of cognitive science, but it has thus far not permeated the mainstream in linguistic theory to a comparable degree. In this study I show that a version of the predominant framework for the formal semantic analysis of conditionals, Kratzer-style premise semantics, allows for a straightforward implementation of the crucial ideas and insights of Pe…Read more
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25Deliberative modality under epistemic uncertaintyLinguistics and Philosophy 36 (3): 225-259. 2013.We discuss the semantic significance of a puzzle concerning ‘ought’ and conditionals recently discussed by Kolodny and MacFarlane. We argue that the puzzle is problematic for the standard Kratzer-style analysis of modality. In Kratzer’s semantics, modals are evaluated relative to a pair of conversational backgrounds. We show that there is no sensible way of assigning values to these conversational backgrounds so as to derive all of the intuitions in Kolodny and MacFarlane’s case. We show that th…Read more
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Modality and Mood in Formal SemanticsIn Jan Nuyts & Johan van der Auwera (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Modality and Mood, Oxford University Press Uk. 2016.This chapter presents a survey of the most important features of the formal semantic analysis of modality and mood. It first focuses on modality as exemplified by the modal verbs, presenting the main concepts and introducing the most common basic formal apparatus used in its analysis, and surveying some of the issues that are currently central in the field. The chapter then turns to the treatment of mood, discussing formal semantic treatments of both “sentential mood” and “verbal mood”. The last…Read more
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University of ConnecticutAssociate Professor
Storrs, Connecticut, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics and Epistemology |