Conditionals

Conditionals pervade our language. Words like "if" and "even if" are used to convey complex messages and this book elaborates and defends a theory of conditionals to take into account recent and influential philosophical work. The book takes as its starting point the fact that the principle purpose of conversation, writing and reading is to transfer information and to effect modifications in the systems of beliefs of hearers and readers. Understanding this process can lead to a simple and satisfying theory of indicative conditionals, which the author distinguishes from subjunctive conditionals. He examines both types of conditionals, together with disjunction, explaining our intuitions about when to use conditionals and the validity of arguments involving them. Recent research on the probabilities of conditionals plays a prominent role in the argument.