Thought Experiments and ‘Would’

Suppose and Tell ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198860662.003.0014 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 229-241

Author(s):

Timothy Williamson

Keyword(s):

Natural Language ◽

Thought Experiments ◽

Main Line ◽

Counterfactual Conditionals ◽

Present Account

In The Philosophy of Philosophy, the author used counterfactual conditionals to analyse the logical connections underlying thought experiments. That analysis was conducted in the framework of something like Lewis’s semantics of counterfactuals; this chapter adjusts it to the present account of counterfactuals as contextually restricted strict conditionals. The main line of argument goes through as before, but with some improvements in flexibility: anaphora between antecedent and consequent no longer requires complications in the treatment of natural language sentences, and ‘unintended’ worlds can be treated as excluded by the contextually relevant restriction, so that they do not falsify the counterfactual at issue.

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What is—or, for that Matter, isn’t—‘Experimental’ Semantics?

10.1093/oso/9780198739548.003.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Pauline Jacobson

Keyword(s):

Natural Language ◽

Large Scale ◽

Empirical Work ◽

Thought Experiments ◽

Natural Language Semantics ◽

Empirical Methods ◽

Language Semantics ◽

Experimental Semantics

This chapter examines the currently fashionable notion of ‘experimental semantics’, and argues that most work in natural language semantics has always been experimental. The oft-cited dichotomy between ‘theoretical’ (or ‘armchair’) and ‘experimental’ is bogus and should be dropped form the discourse. The same holds for dichotomies like ‘intuition-based’ (or ‘thought experiments’) vs. ‘empirical’ work (and ‘real experiments’). The so-called new ‘empirical’ methods are often nothing more than collecting the large-scale ‘intuitions’ or, doing multiple thought experiments. Of course the use of multiple subjects could well allow for a better experiment than the more traditional single or few subject methodologies. But whether or not this is the case depends entirely on the question at hand. In fact, the chapter considers several multiple-subject studies and shows that the particular methodology in those cases does not necessarily provide important insights, and the chapter argues that some its claimed benefits are incorrect.

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Meaning, Modality, and Possible Worlds Semantics

Philosophy of Language ◽

10.23943/princeton/9780691138664.003.0004 ◽

2010 ◽

Author(s):

Scott Soames

Keyword(s):

Natural Language ◽

Classical Logic ◽

Possible Worlds ◽

David Lewis ◽

Formal Languages ◽

Possible Worlds Semantics ◽

Natural Languages ◽

Counterfactual Conditionals ◽

Richard Montague ◽

Close Parallel

This chapter begins with a discussion of Kripke-style possible worlds semantics. It considers one of the most important applications of possible worlds semantics, the account of counterfactual conditionals given in Robert Stalnaker and David Lewis. It then goes on to examine the work of Richard Montague. Montague specified syntactic rules that generate English, or English-like, structures directly, while pairing each such rule with a truth-theoretic rule interpreting it. This close parallel between syntax and semantics is what makes the languages of classical logic so transparently tractable, and what they were designed to embody. Montague's bold contention is that we do not have to replace natural language natural languages with formal substitutes to achieve such transparency. The same techniques employed to create formal languages can be used to describe natural languages in mathematically revealing ways.

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Causality and Causal Reasoning in Natural Language

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199399550.013.32 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Torgrim Solstad ◽

Oliver Bott

Keyword(s):

Natural Language ◽

Cognitive Processing ◽

Causal Reasoning ◽

Causal Model ◽

Discourse Markers ◽

Causal Relations ◽

Counterfactual Conditionals ◽

Adequate Evaluation ◽

Implicit Causality

This chapter provides a combined overview of theoretical and psycholinguistic approaches to causality in language. The chapter’s main phenomenological focus is on causal relations as expressed intra-clausally by verbs (e.g., break, open) and between sentences by discourse markers (e.g., because, therefore). Special attention is given to implicit causality verbs that are argued to trigger expectations of explanations to occur in subsequent discourse. The chapter also discusses linguistic expressions that do not encode causation as such, but that seem to be dependent on a causal model for their adequate evaluation, such as counterfactual conditionals. The discussion of the phenomena is complemented by an overview of important aspects of their cognitive processing as revealed by psycholinguistic experimentation.

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Causation and the Probability of Causal Conditionals

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199399550.013.3 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

David E. Over

Keyword(s):

Natural Language ◽

Conditional Probability ◽

Causal Reasoning ◽

Probability Judgments ◽

Counterfactual Conditionals ◽

Bayesian Inferences ◽

Conditional Inferences

Indicative and counterfactual conditionals are central to reasoning in general and causal reasoning in particular. Normative theorists and psychologists have held a range of views on how natural language indicative and counterfactual conditionals, and probability judgments about them, are related to causation. There is the question of whether “causal” conditionals, referring to possible causes and effects, can be used to explain causation, or whether causation can be used to explain the conditionals. There are questions about how causation, conditionals, Bayesian inferences, conditional probability, and imaging are related to each other. Psychological results are relevant to these questions, including findings on how people make conditional inferences and judgments about possibilities, conditionals, and conditional probability. Deeper understanding of the relation between causation and conditionals will come in further research on people’s reasoning from counterfactuals as premises, and to counterfactuals as conclusions.

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