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Contribution to Book
Chasing Hook: Quantified Indicative Conditionals
Conditionals, Probability, and Paradox: Themes from the Philosophy of Dorothy Edgington
(2021)
Abstract
This chapter was written in 2013 and was posted in the Semantics Archive in January 2014. The preprint of the published version has been in the Semantics Archive since 2016. The Semantics Archive is an electronic preprint archive hosted by the Linguistics Society of America. https://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/WU3ODIwZ/kratzer-chasing-hook.pdf
The chapter looks at indicative conditionals embedded under quantifiers, with a special emphasis on ‘one-case’, episodic, conditionals as in No query was answered if it came from a doubtful address. It agrees with earlier assessments that a complete conditional (with antecedent and consequent) is embedded under a quantifier in those constructions, but then proceeds to create a dilemma by showing that we can’t always find the right interpretation for that conditional. Contrary to earlier assessments, Stalnaker’s conditional won’t always do. The paper concludes that the embedded conditional in the sentence above is a material implication, but the if-clause also plays a pragmatic role in restricting the domain of the embedding quantifier. That an appeal to pragmatics should be necessary at all goes with Edgington’s verdict that “we do not have a satisfactory general account of sentences with conditional constituents.”
One of the conclusions drawn at the end of the chapter is that the English modal "will" should be given a Stalnaker selection function analysis. The idea is implemented by attaching to "will" an accessibility function variable that receives its value from the context of use and can be dynamically updated by preceding if-clauses, as proposed in von Fintel (1994). The argument for a Stalnaker selection function analysis of "will" provided by the paper is that, together with the restrictor analysis of "if"-clauses, it yields the correct truth-conditions for "will"-conditionals (as opposed to episodic, 'one case', conditionals) embedded under quantifiers. The proposal that the English modal "will" should be given a Stalnaker selection function analysis has since been taken up and elaborated considerably in Cariani & Santorio's (2018) paper on "will" in Mind, and is a central idea in Cariani's (2021) book The Modal Future.
Keywords
- indicative conditionals,
- quantified conditionals,
- Dorothy Edgington,
- embedded conditionals,
- material implication,
- generic conditionals,
- Conditional Excluded Middle,
- Weak Boethius Thesis,
- Stalnaker’s Conditional,
- restrictor view of conditionals,
- modal future,
- episodic conditionals
Disciplines
Publication Date
2021
Editor
Lee Walters & John Hawthorne
Publisher
Oxford University Press
DOI
10.1093/oso/9780198712732.001.0001
Publisher Statement
https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198712732.003.0004
Citation Information
Angelika Kratzer (2021). Chasing Hook: Quantified Indicative Conditionals. In Lee Walters & John Hawthorne (eds.): Conditionals, Probability, and Paradox: Themes from the Philosophy of Dorothy Edgington, 40-57.