A Defense of Conditional Excluded Middle

This paper is a polemic about a detail in the semantics for conditionals. It takes for granted what is common to semantic theories proposed by David Lewis,1 John Pollock,2 Brian Chellas,3 and myself and Richmond Thomason4 in order to focus on some small points of difference between the theory I favor and the others. I will sketch quickly and roughly the general ideas which lie behind all of these theories, and the common semantical framework in which these ideas are developed. Then I will describe the divergences between my theory and the others — I will focus on the difference between my theory and the one favored by Lewis — and argue that my theory gives a better account of the way conditionals work in natural language.