Conditionals
TOC: [Synopsis] [ Texts ] [ Requirements ] [ Website ] [ Tentative Schedule ]
Synopsis
Basically, the seminar will consist of a careful reading of Jonathan Bennett's recent book A Philosophical Guide to Conditionals, supplemented with some primary readings that he discusses. The primary readings will all be available in electronic fromat from this syllabus page. I will update the page as we go along, so keep an eye on this page throughout the semester. There are a few other books that might be worth mentioning (but won't be required for the course). Jackson's (1991) OUP collection Conditionals (now out of print) contains many useful primary articles (all of which are discussed by Bennett). Jackson's (1987) Blackwell monograph Conditionals (also out of print) is a nice sustained piece on conditionals. The Harper et al. collection Ifs (still available) is somewhat useful (but a bit older than most of the material we'll be looking at), and the Sanford volume on conditionals (also in print) is a nice overview of pre-1985 work on conditionals.
The seminar will break (roughly) into two parts. Part One of the seminar (about 7 weeks), which corresponds to chapters 1–9 of Bennett's book will be concerned with the pragmatics, semantics, logic, and epistemology of indicative conditionals (don't worry if you don't know the jargon -- we will learn that as we go along). Part Two of the seminar (about 8 weeks), which corresponds to chapters 10–23 of Bennett's book will be about subjunctive (or counterfactual) conditionals. The second part of the course will involve more metaphysics, but aspects of semantics and logic will also arise here (though not as heavily as in part one).
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Texts
The main text for the course is Bennett's book. Some primary sources will also be available, below, in electronic format. Most of these will be in Adobe PDF format. In order to read/print/search, etc. our PDF files (note: all the PDF files available here are fully searchable), you will need Adobe Reader 6 (or another reader that can read PDF version 6 files). I recommend that you download the latest version of Adobe Reader asap (it's free). See the tentative schedule, below, for all readings (both required and supplementary).
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Requirements
- Seminar Paper (70%)
- The seminar paper is the main work required and counts toward 70% of your semester's grade.
- Papers can be on virtually any subject that is relevant to this seminar. I encourage you to come up with your own topic, but I am happy to make recommendations if you get stuck.
- Everyone should email me with a proposed topic by November 1 (at the latest). That email should (1) describe the problem your seminar paper will tackle, (2) suggest what sort of solution you hope to be able to defend, (3) list the most important texts that you think you will need to study, and (4) explain why you decided to tackle this problem. Obviously, it is hard to answer these questions before you have finished (or even begun) your papers. But it is important to take a stab at answering them, even if it turns out that your guesses as to where you are going turn out to be off the mark.
- Seminar papers should be 12–15 double-spaced pages in length. Much shorter papers probably will not engage the issues with sufficient detail, depth, and care. Longer papers are fine, but not if they could have been shorter without loss. Seminar papers are due on Tuesday, December 10 (last seminar meeting). Incompletes are granted only for good reasons.
- Further comments on writing seminar papers will be posted on the web.
- Seminar Presentation (30%)
- Students who are enrolled in the seminar for credit are all required to give one seminar presentation during the semester, which will count for one-fifth of your semester's grade.
- Seminar presentations will typically consist in articulating some specific issue that arises in the assigned reading for the particular meeting of the seminar, clarifying and relating the views on this issue that are defended in the readings, and offering a tentative conclusion concerning how the issue should be addressed.
- Seminar presentations should be roughly 20–30 minutes in length. The goal is to make a clear and useful presentation to the seminar that will help to focus the discussion that follows, not to write a second briefer paper. Seminar presentations may be interrupted with questions, and seminar presenters should lead the ensuing discussion.
- A handout should be prepared (usually 4–6 typed pages) which summarizes the presentation. I will work with you before seminar to hone your presentation handout. And, afterward, you will be expected to polish the handout, based on class discussion. The final product will be the seminar's notes & handouts page.
- In many cases seminar presentations will be on the same topic as the seminar paper. But this is not necessary, and those who give presentations early in the semester may well decide to focus on different questions in their seminar papers.
- Students should have an outline of their presentations ready a week in advance and should discuss their outlines with me.
- A list of topics and dates for presentations (corresponding to various chapters in Bennett's book) will be posted on the notes & handouts page and distributed during the second meeting of the seminar, and I shall ask you to let me know your first four choices by our fifth meeting. I will be presenting material for the first few meetings of the seminar.
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Website
Current course information can be found on the course web site, at:
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~fitelson/conditionals/
The home page of our website is reserved mainly for announcements. The purpose of the other pages on our website should be self–explanatory. You should keep an eye on the course website, as it will be updated regularly with various content and announcements pertaining to the course. The only two computer applications you will need to view/print, etc. the content on our website are: (i) your favorite web browser, and (ii) Adobe Reader (version 6 or later, or – if you prefer – another program that can read Acrobat PDF version 6 files).
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Tentative Schedule (dynamically evolving and subject to change – so stay tuned!)
Week 1 : Overview of the "Conditionals Landscape" (Me)
- Required Reading
- Further Reading
Week 2: The Material Conditional: Grice & Jackson (Me)
- Required Reading
- Further Reading
Week 3: Jackson (Cont'd), and Lead-Up to "The Equation" -- Probabilities of Indicatives 1 (Me)
- Required Reading
- Further Reading
Week 4: "The Equation" -- Probabilities of Indicatives 2 (Me)
- Required Reading
- Further Reading
- Note: We will skip most of Chapter 5, for now. Alan Hajek will present most of this material on Oct. 5. I will present my
(very brief and critical)
take on the "proofs", and then we will come back to chapter 5 when Alan is here.
Week 5: The Subjectivity of Indicative Conditionals (Peter)
- Required Reading
- Further Reading
Week 6: Back to Chapter 5 (Alan Hájek)
- Required Reading
- Further Reading
- See the Further Readings for Week 4, above.
Week 7: Indicative Conditionals Lack Truth-Values (Jennifer)
- Required Reading
- Further Reading
[I've decided to skip chapters 8 and 9 in the interest of covering more on subjunctives.]
Week 8: Subjunctive Conditionals — First Steps & `Closest Worlds' (Fabrizio)
- Required Reading
- Further Reading
Week 9: Unrolling from the Antecedent Time & `Forks' (Aaron)
- Required Reading
- Further Reading
Week 10: Reflections on Legality (Michael)
- Required Reading
- Further Reading
Week 11: Truth at the Actual World (Ellen)
- Required Reading
- Further Reading
- Slote, Time in Counterfactuals
- Edgington, On Conditionals
- Hiddleston, A Causal Theory of Counterfactuals
- Johnson, Induction and Modality
- Schaffer, Counterfactuals, causal independence and conceptual circularity
- Readings on Probabilistic Explanation
- Railton, A Deductive-Nomological Model of Probabilistic Explanation, Philosophy of Science, Vol. 45, No. 2. (Jun., 1978), pp. 206–226.
- Railton, Probability, Explanation, and Information, Synthese 48 (1981): 233-256.
- Lewis, Causal Explanation, especially footnote #12, which reads (in part) as follows:
- It is important to distinguish Railton's proposal from a different way of using single-case chances in a covering-law model of explanation, proposed in James H. Fetzer, "A Single Case Propensity Theory of Explanation," Synthese 28 (1974), pp. 171-98. For Fetzer, as for Railton, the covering laws are universal generalizations about single-case chances. But for Fetzer, as for Hempel, the explanatory argument, without any addendum, is the whole of the explanation; it is inductive, not deductive; and its conclusion says outright that the explanandum took place, not that it had a certain chance. This theory shares some of the merits of Railton's. However, it has one quite peculiar consequence. For Fetzer, as for Hempel, an explanation is an argument; however, a good explanation is not necessarily a good argument. Fetzer, like Railton, wants to have explanations even when the explanandum is extremely improbable. But in that case a good explanation is an extremely bad argument. It is an inductive argument whose premises not only fail to give us any good reason to believe the conclusion, but in fact give us very good reason to disbelieve the conclusion.
- Salmon, Four Decades of Scientific Explanation, University of Minnesota Press, 1989, Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 [sections 3.3, and 4.6] [you can download the notes and bibliography of Salmon's book here
[I'm skipping chapter 16, since we've done enough probability stuff!]
Week 12: 'Even If...' (Maile)
- Required Reading
- Further Reading
Week 13: Backward Subjunctive Conditionals (Nic)
- Required Reading
- Further Reading
Week 14: Subjunctive Conditionals and Time's Arrow (Nat)
- Required Reading
- Further Reading
Week 15: Support Theories (Kenny)
- Required Reading
- Further Reading
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