Zif is if

Mind 115 (459):519-566 (2006)
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Abstract

A conditional takes the form ‘If A, then C’. On the truth-conditional view of conditionals, conditional statements state things with truth-conditions. On the suppositional view, conditional statements involve the expression of a supposition. I develop and defend a view on which conditional statements both state things with truth-conditions and express suppositions. On this view, something is fundamentally right about standard truth-conditional and standard suppositional views. Considerations in favor of conditional contents lead us to attribute truth-conditional contents to conditional statements; considerations in favor of the suppositional view then lead us to an unexpected account of these contents. The resulting view has a number of benefits, including a unified treatment of conditional speech acts, a plausible account of our practice of ascribing truth-values to conditional statements, a simple explanation of the apparent equivalence between probabilities of conditionals and conditional probabilities, an intuitive treatment of ‘Gibbardian stand-offs’, a plausible logic of conditionals, and an explanation of why theorizing about conditionals has proved so difficult

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Citations of this work

Embedding Epistemic Modals.Cian Dorr & John Hawthorne - 2013 - Mind 122 (488):867-914.
A Suppositional Theory of Conditionals.Sam Carter - 2021 - Mind 130 (520):1059–1086.
What 'If'?William B. Starr - 2014 - Philosophers' Imprint 14.
Conditionals, Supposition and Euthyphro.Daniel Nolan - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.

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References found in this work

A Theory of Conditionals.Robert Stalnaker - 1968 - In Nicholas Rescher (ed.), Studies in Logical Theory. Oxford,: Blackwell. pp. 98-112.
Philosophical Guide to Conditionals.Jonathan Bennett - 2003 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
Methods of logic.Willard Van Orman Quine - 1962 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
A counterexample to modus ponens.Vann McGee - 1985 - Journal of Philosophy 82 (9):462-471.

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