Speaker: Katrin Schulz
Date and Time: Thursday, February 28th 2019, 16:30-18:00
Venue: ILLC Seminar Room F1.15, Science Park 107.
Title: Conditionals, Causality and Conditional Probability.
Abstract. The appropriateness, or acceptability, of a conditional does not just ‘go with’ the corresponding conditional probability. A condition of dependence is required as well (cf. Douven, 2008, 2016; Skovgaard-Olsen et al., 2016). In this talk a particular notion of dependence is proposed. It is shown that under both a forward causal and a backward evidential (or diagnostic) reading of the conditional, this appropriateness condition reduces to conditional probability under some natural circumstances. Because this is in particular the case for the so-called diagnostic reading of the conditional, this analysis might help to explain some of Douven and Verbrugge’s (2010) empirical observations.
(Joint work with Robert van Rooij)