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(2010) Synthese 176 (2).
In contemporary discussions of the Ramsey Test for conditionals, it is commonly held that (i) supposing the antecedent of a conditional is adopting a potential state of full belief, and (ii) Modus Ponens is a valid rule of inference. I argue on the basis of Thomason Conditionals (such as ‘If Sally is deceiving, I do not believe it’) and Moore’s Paradox that both claims are wrong. I then develop a double-indexed Update Semantics for conditionals which takes these two results into account while doing justice to the key intuitions underlying the Ramsey Test. The semantics is extended to cover some further phenomena, including the recent observation that epistemic modal operators give rise to something very like, but also very unlike, Moore’s Paradox.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/s11229-009-9494-z
Full citation:
Willer, M. (2010). New surprises for the Ramsey test. Synthese 176 (2), pp. 291-309.
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