Indicative conditionals and probabilistic support is the title of a talk I’ll be giving in Ludwigsburg next week (Monday 17, November). The workshop Reasoning and making decisions is organized by Laura Martignon and Keith Stenning. Full program here, my abstract below.
Indicative conditionals and probabilistic support
Abstract. Once upon a time, some thought that indicative conditionals could be effectively analyzed by means of the material conditional. Nowadays, an alternative theoretical construct largely prevails and receives wide acceptance, namely, conditional probability (of the consequent given the antecedent). Partly following earlier critical remarks made by others (most prominently, Douven and Milne), I advocate a revision of this consensus and suggest that incremental probabilistic support (rather than conditional probability alone) is key to the understanding of both the logic of indicative conditionals and their role in human cognition.