Accesso libero

Might-counterfactuals and the principle of conditional excluded middle

Disputatio's Cover Image
Disputatio
XII Taller d'Investigació en Filosofia
INFORMAZIONI SU QUESTO ARTICOLO

Cita

Owing to the problem of inescapable clashes, epistemic accounts of might-counterfactuals have recently gained traction. In a different vein, the might argument against conditional excluded middle has rendered the latter a contentious principle to incorporate into a logic for conditionals. The aim of this paper is to rescue both ontic mightcounterfactuals and conditional excluded middle from these disparate debates and show them to be compatible. I argue that the antecedent of a might-counterfactual is semantically underdetermined with respect to the counterfactual worlds it selects for evaluation. This explains how might-counterfactuals select multiple counterfactual worlds as they apparently do and why their utterance confers a weaker alethic commitment on the speaker than does that of a would-counterfactual, as well as provides an ontic solution to inescapable clashes. I briefly sketch how the semantic underdetermination and truth conditions of mightcounterfactuals are regulated by conversational context.

eISSN:
0873-626X
Lingue:
Inglese, Portuguese
Frequenza di pubblicazione:
4 volte all'anno
Argomenti della rivista:
Philosophy, Selected Philosophical Movements, Analytical Philosophy