TY - JOUR
T1 - Conditional Heresies
AU - CARIANI, Fabrizio
AU - GOLDSTEIN, Simon
N1 - Special thanks to Shawn Standefer for extensive written comments on a previous version of this paper and to anonymous reviewers for Philosophy and Phenomenological Research and the Amsterdam Colloquium. Also thanks to Andrew Bacon, Ivano Ciardelli, Simon Charlow, Kai von Fintel, Branden Fitelson, Jeremy Goodman, Nathan Howard, Matt Mandelkern, Daniel Rothschild, Jeff Russell, Paolo Santorio, Mark Schroeder, Lee Walters, Dan Waxman, Alexis Wellwood, audiences at LENLS 14, the 2017 Amsterdam Colloquium, and the USC Mind and Language Group.
PY - 2020/9
Y1 - 2020/9
N2 - The principles of Conditional Excluded Middle (CEM) and Simplification of Disjunctive Antecedents (SDA) have received substantial attention in isolation. Both principles are plausible generalizations about natural language conditionals. There is however little discussion of their interaction. This paper aims to remedy this gap and explore the significance of having both principles constrain the logic of the conditional. Our negative finding is that, together with elementary logical assumptions, CEM and SDA yield a variety of implausible consequences. Despite these incompatibility results, we open up a narrow space to satisfy both. We show that, by simultaneously appealing to the alternative-introducing analysis of disjunction and to the theory of homogeneity presuppositions, we can satisfy both. Furthermore, the theory that validates both principles resembles a recent semantics that is defended by Santorio on independent grounds. The cost of this approach is that it must give up the transitivity of entailment: we suggest that this is a feature, not a bug, and connect it with recent developments of intransitive notions of entailment.
AB - The principles of Conditional Excluded Middle (CEM) and Simplification of Disjunctive Antecedents (SDA) have received substantial attention in isolation. Both principles are plausible generalizations about natural language conditionals. There is however little discussion of their interaction. This paper aims to remedy this gap and explore the significance of having both principles constrain the logic of the conditional. Our negative finding is that, together with elementary logical assumptions, CEM and SDA yield a variety of implausible consequences. Despite these incompatibility results, we open up a narrow space to satisfy both. We show that, by simultaneously appealing to the alternative-introducing analysis of disjunction and to the theory of homogeneity presuppositions, we can satisfy both. Furthermore, the theory that validates both principles resembles a recent semantics that is defended by Santorio on independent grounds. The cost of this approach is that it must give up the transitivity of entailment: we suggest that this is a feature, not a bug, and connect it with recent developments of intransitive notions of entailment.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85058935157&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/phpr.12565
DO - 10.1111/phpr.12565
M3 - Journal Article (refereed)
SN - 0031-8205
VL - 101
SP - 251
EP - 282
JO - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
JF - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
IS - 2
ER -