Ramsey's test: a unified account of conditionals

APSE-IVC-CEU Talks
The Institute Vienna Circle the Unit for Applied Philosophy of Science and Epistemology APSE (of the Department of Philosophy of the Universtiy of Vienna) and the Central European University CEU are jointly organising a series of talks this term

Date: 22/04/2021

Time: 15h00

Online Plattform: The meeting will be online via Zoom | Talks in Philosophy of Science and Epistemology PSE

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Abstract:

In this talk I will lay out a unified account of conditionals, inspired by Ramsey's work. In contemporary literature on conditionals, the "Ramsey test" denotes a procedure for the evaluation of conditional sentences. The test arises from a footnote by Ramsey. Several versions of the Ramsey test have been proposed, and, although very different, they all agree that Ramsey covers only indicative conditionals. In the first part of the talk, I will show that this assumption is ungrounded. I will recover Ramsey's own account of conditionals, proving that he discusses all types of conditionals, including subjunctives and counterfactuals. Following Ramsey, I will reject the indicatives/subjunctives distinction, and argue that conditionals, together with some implicit contextual information, are all instances of generalisations. Accordingly, I will suggest a unified account of conditionals and a new Ramsey test. Finally, I will provide an acceptability criterion and discuss some problematic inferences.