Conditionals: Truth, safety, and success

Abstract

Whether I take some action that aims at desired consequence C depends on whether or not I take it to be true that if I so act, I will bring C about and that if I do not, I will fail to. And the action will succeed if and only if my beliefs are true. We argue that two theses follow: (I) To believe a conditional is to be disposed to infer its consequent from the truth of its antecedent, and (II) The conditional is true iff the inference would not make a true belief in the antecedent cause a false belief in the consequent.

Inferentialism: A Manifesto

“…And really only a semantics. At this point, we have nothing to say about conditional threats or conditional promises, which are not the kind of things that can be true or false.27 The point is also missed inMellor and Bradley (2021).…”

Conceptual spaces and the strength of similarity-based arguments

“…To forestall misunderstanding, we note that Inferentialism-as stated inKrzyżanowska, Wenmackers, and Douven (2014)-is limited to standard indicative conditionals, excluding so-called nonconditionals(Lycan, 2001) such as speech act conditionals ("If you're hungry, there are cookies on the table") and non-interference conditionals ("If hell freezes over, Alice will not marry Bob"), as well as subjunctive conditionals and concessives (i.e., "even if" conditionals, which are sometimes also expressed without "even"). As a result, criticisms that accuse Inferentialism of being unable to account for, for instance, concessives (e.g.,Mellor & Bradley, 2021) are misguided. As a further…”