A Sketch of Some Recent Developments in the Theory of Conditionals

The papers discussed in this sketch represent what I take to be a very exciting stream in recent work on conditionals. The first section includes two classics, Stalnaker’s ‘A Theory of Conditionals’ and Lewis’ ‘Counterfactuals and Comparative Possibility’, together with Stalnaker’s new paper ‘A Defence of Conditional Excluded Middle’. These papers contrast sharply with the earlier work of Goodman, Chisholm, and others, which attested to the problematic character of talk about alternative possibilities by drawing attention to the ambiguity and extreme context dependence of our linguistic intuitions about counterfactuals.1 Stalnaker and Lewis proceed by constructing abstract models that take as primitive the very sort of alternative possibilities that these earlier writers found problematic. They use these models to formulate new and interesting questions which can then be used to suggest examples on which to test linguistic intuitions. Whatever one thinks about the ultimate suitability of the possible worlds account, as an analysis of English conditionals, he must agree that the dispute between Stalnaker and Lewis in these papers has considerably sharpened and clarified our linguistic intuitions.

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