On similarity in counterfactuals

Arregui, Ana

doi:10.1007/s10988-009-9060-7

Cited by 87 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…The alternative to Iatridou's account is to try to maintain that the additional pasts in subjunctive conditionals do after all retain their usual temporal meaning. This idea goes back to Dudman (1983Dudman ( , 1984Dudman ( , 1988Dudman ( , 1989) and has been pursued by Ippolito (2003Ippolito ( , 2007 and Arregui (2005Arregui ( , 2009, among others. We do not have the space to survey the details of these accounts.…”

Section: Conditionals and Tense And Aspectmentioning

confidence: 99%

59. Conditionals

Fintel¹

2011

Handbücher Zur Sprach- Und Kommunikationswissenschaft / Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science

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Section: Conditionals and Tense And Aspectmentioning

confidence: 99%

59. Conditionals

Fintel¹

2011

Handbücher Zur Sprach- Und Kommunikationswissenschaft / Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science

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“…Now, consider Arregui's variant from Arregui 2009. Assume that Peter presses a button in a random coin-tossing device and heads comes up.…”

Section: Coin Tossingmentioning

confidence: 99%

How similar is similar enough?

Ippolito

2017

Semantics and Pragmatics

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I investigate the issue of the context-dependence of counterfactual conditionals and how the context constrains similarity in selecting the right set of worlds necessary to arrive at the correct truth-conditions. I propose that similarity is constrained by what I call Consistency and Non-Triviality. Assuming a model of the discourse along the lines proposed by Roberts (2012) and Büring (2003), according to which conversational moves are answers to often implicit questions under discussion, the idea behind Non-Triviality is that a counterfactual statement answers a conditional question under discussion and, therefore, is required to make a non-trivial assertion. I show that non-accidental generalizations which have often been taken to play an important role in the interpretation of counterfactuals, are crucial in selecting which conditional question is under discussion, and I propose a formal mechanism to identify the relevant question under discussion.

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“…Before moving on it is worth acknowledging a tradition of analysis which attempts to give a standard past tense meaning to subjunctive antecedents after all (Skyrms 1974;Adams 1975a;Dudman 1981Dudman , 1983Dudman , 1984Dudman , 1988Ippolito 2003;Arregui 2007Arregui , 2009. The basic idea is that the past tense in subjunctive antecedents scopes over the modal meaning: when I say if Bob had danced tomorrow I'm talking about what used to be possible, namely a future in which Bob danced.…”

Section: The Ingredients Of a Subjunctive Antecedentmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Uniform Theory of Conditionals

Starr

2013

J Philos Logic

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A uniform theory of conditionals is one which compositionally captures the behavior of both indicative and subjunctive conditionals without positing ambiguities. This paper raises new problems for the closest thing to a uniform analysis in the literature (Stalnaker 1975) and develops a new theory which solves them. I also show that this new analysis provides an improved treatment of three much-discussed phenomena (the import-export equivalence, reverse Sobel-sequences and disjunctive antecedents). While these results concern central issues in the study of conditionals, broader themes in the philosophy of language and formal semantics are also engaged here. This new analysis exploits a dynamic conception of meaning where the meaning of a symbol is its potential to change an agent's mental state (or the state of a conversation) rather than being the symbol's content (e.g. the proposition it expresses). The analysis of conditionals is also built on the idea that the contrast between subjunctive and indicative conditionals parallels a contrast between revising and consistently extending some body of information.

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On similarity in counterfactuals

Cited by 87 publications

References 27 publications

59. Conditionals

59. Conditionals

How similar is similar enough?

A Uniform Theory of Conditionals

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