Is Stalnaker's Semantics Complete?

Erkenntnis:1-9 (forthcoming)
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Abstract

It is shown that one common formulation of Stalnaker's semantics for conditionals is incomplete: it has no sound and (strongly) complete proof system. At first, this seems to conflict with well-known completeness results for this semantics (e.g., Stalnaker and Thomason 1967; Stalnaker 1970 and Lewis 1973, ch. 6). As it turns out, it does not: these completeness results rely on another closely-related formulation of the semantics that is provably complete. Specifically, the difference comes down to how the Limit Assumption is stated. I close with some remarks about what this means for the logic of conditionals.

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Alexander W. Kocurek
University of California, San Diego

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References found in this work

A Theory of Conditionals.Robert Stalnaker - 1968 - In Nicholas Rescher, Studies in Logical Theory. Oxford,: Blackwell. pp. 98-112.
Inquiry.Robert C. Stalnaker - 1984 - Linguistics and Philosophy 11 (4):515-519.
Pragmatics.Robert Stalnaker - 1970 - Synthese 22 (1-2):272--289.

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