In this paper it is argued that three of the most prominent theories of conditional acceptance face very serious problems. David Lewis' concept of imaging, the Ramsey test and Jonathan Bennett's recent hybrid view all face viscious regresses, or they either employ unanalyzed components or depend upon an implausibly strong version of doxastic voluntarism.

I give a semantics for a logic with two pairs of doxastic modals and an indicative conditional connective that all nest without restriction. Sentences are evaluated as accepted, rejected, or neither. Certainty is the necessity-like modality of acceptance. Inferences may proceed from premises that are certain, or merely accepted, or a mix of both. This semantic setup yields some striking results. Notably, the existence of inferences that preserve certainty but not acceptance very directly implies both failure of modus (...) ponens for the indicative conditional in the logic of acceptance and failure of the deduction theorem for the material conditional in the logic of certainty. The latter failure dissolves, in the logic of certainty, the much - discussed tension between modus ponens and the law of import-export. (shrink)

The chapter is devoted to the probability and acceptability of indicative conditionals. Focusing on three influential theses, the Equation, Adams’ thesis, and the qualitative version of Adams’ thesis, Sikorski argues that none of them is well supported by the available empirical evidence. In the most controversial case of the Equation, the results of many studies which support it are, at least to some degree, undermined by some recent experimental findings. Sikorski discusses the Ramsey Test, and Lewis’s triviality proof, with special (...) attention dedicated to the popular ways of blocking it. Sikorski concludes that the role of the three theses in future studies of conditionals should be re-thought, and he presents alternative proposals. (shrink)

Three confirmation principles discussed by Hempel are the Converse Consequence Condition, the Special Consequence Condition and the Entailment Condition. Le Morvan (1999) has argued that, when the choice among confirmation principles is just about them, it is the Converse Consequence Condition that must be rejected. In this paper, I make this argument definitive. In doing that, I will provide an indisputable proof that the simple conjunction of the Converse Consequence Condition and the Entailment Condition yields a disastrous consequence.

As a moral ideal, accepting the circumstances of one's life and its attendant miseries is, if not positively repugnant to modern ears, at least utterly puzzling. Historians might attempt to trace this aversion to the French Rationalists and English Utilitarians who believed that once the laws of human behaviour were discovered all social problems would be solved and who even tried to establish communities in which unhappiness would simply be eradicated. In this optimistic climate of social engineering, when it began (...) to appear as self-evident that each individual had a natural ‘right’ to happiness, accepting misery and social evil must have seemed perverse in contrast with striving to improve one's own and others’ condition in life. (shrink)

Two meanings of "subjective consequentialism" are distinguished: conscious deliberation with the aim of producing maximally-good consequences, versus acting in ways that, given one's evidence set and reasoning capabilities, is subjectively most likely to maximize expected consequences. The latter is opposed to "objective consequentialism," which demands that we act in ways that actually produce the best total consequences. Peter Railton's arguments for a version of objective consequentialism confuse the two subjective forms, and are only effective against the first. After reviewing the (...) arguments of Eric Wiland and Frances Howard-Snyder against objective consequentialism, two of Railton's arguments which might seem to count against the second form of subjective consequentialism are shown to be ineffective. This leaves subjective consequentialism as a viable theory to replace objective consequentialism with. (shrink)

It is well documented that the higher the socioeconomic status (SES) of patients, the better their health and life expectancy. SES also influences the use of health services—the higher the patients' SES, the more time and specialised health services provided. This leads to the following question: should clinicians give priority to individual patients with low SES in order to enhance health equity? Some argue that equity is best preserved by physicians who remain loyal to ‘ordinary medical fairness’ in non-ideal circumstances (...) when health disparities persist; ie, doctors should allocate care according to needs only and treat everyone with equal regard by being neutral with respect to patients' SES. This paper furthers a discussion of this view by questioning how equitable needs relate to SES. To clarify, it distinguishes between four versions of ‘healthcare need’ and approaches an acceptable conceptualisation of the notion supported by Norman Daniels' theory on health equity. It concludes that doctors should remain neutral to patients' SES in cases in which several patients require the same health care. However, equitable health care requires considerations of the impact of socioeconomic factors (SEF) on patients' capacity to benefit from the care. Remaining neutral towards patients' SES in this respect does not promote equal regard. It follows that priority setting on the basis of SEF is required in fair clinical distribution of care, eg, through allocating more time to patients with low SES. In order to advance equity accurately, the concept of ordinary medical fairness should be amplified according to this clarification. (shrink)

Myhill-Shepherdson property in recursive function theory states that extensional effective program transformations determine continuous operations on partial functions. Case showed that this property fails to characterize acceptability of numberings of partial recursive functions. In this note we present a higher type analogue to Myhill-Shepherdson property. Our purpose is to show that higher type Myhill-Shepherdson property characterizes weak acceptability under a natural condition.

The goal of sociology, and all social science, is to produce reliable knowledge about human behavioral and social phenomena. To reach that goal, we undertake three kinds of activities: theoretical work, empirical work, and, even more basic, we develop frameworks that assemble the fundamental questions together with the fundamental tools that will be used to address them. This article examines the three sets of activities and their interrelations. Both deductive and nondeductive theory are highlighted, as are three kinds of empirical (...) work—testing the predictions of deductive theories, testing the propositions produced by nondeductive theories, and extratheoretical measurement and estimation. Illustrations are drawn from the fields of status, justice, and migration. (shrink)

Khoo (2022) defends a principle called Weak Sufficiency, which is that coming to accept an indicative conditional involves nothing more than coming to accept the corresponding indicative conditional. Khoo argues both that Weak Sufficiency is true and that the selection function theorist lacks an explanation of why it seems plausible. In this paper, I contest both claims, examining how various versions of the selection function theory interact with cases that might seem to support Weak Sufficiency.

Depression is a highly recurrent disorder with limited treatment alternatives for reducing risk of subsequent episodes. Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and attention bias modification (ABM) separately have shown some promise in reducing depressive symptoms. This study investigates (a) if group-based ACT had a greater impact in reducing residual symptoms of depression over a 12-month follow-up than a control condition, and (b) if preceding ACT with ABM produced added benefits. This multisite study consisted of two phases. In phase 1, (...) participants with a history of depression, currently in remission (N= 244), were randomized to either receive 14 days of ABM or a control condition. In phase 2, a quasi- experimental design was adopted, and only phase-1 participants from the Sørlandet site (N= 124) next received an 8-week group-based ACT intervention. Self-reported and clinician-rated depression symptoms were assessed at baseline, immediately after phase 1 and at 1, 2, 6, and 12 months after the conclusion of phase 1. At 12-month follow-up, participants who received ACT exhibited fewer self-reported and clinician-rated depressive symptoms. There were no significant differences between ACT groups preceded by ABM or a control condition. There were no significant differences between ACT groups preceded by ABM or a control condition. Group-based ACT successfully decreased residual symptoms in depression over 12 months, suggesting some promise in preventing relapse. (shrink)

Pluralists believe that there are cases of distinct but spatio-temporally coinciding things. The statue goes, the piece of clay remains: differing persistence conditions, different things. Yet while both are with us, they are obviously in the same place. The argument rests on two assumptions: that statues have their shape essentially and that pieces of clay do not. Only if we make both does the conclusion follow. Here I suggest that while both assumptions are plausible on their face, each may be (...) questioned. Given this, we are not forced to accept their conjunction and can thus avoid the counter-intuitive conclusion it entails. (shrink)

We propose a new account of indicative conditionals, giving acceptability and logical closure conditions for them. We start from Adams’ Thesis: the claim that the acceptability of a simple indicative equals the corresponding conditional probability. The Thesis is widely endorsed, but arguably false and refuted by empirical research. To fix it, we submit, we need a relevance constraint: we accept a simple conditional 'If φ, then ψ' to the extent that (i) the conditional probability p(ψ|φ) is high, provided that (ii) (...) φ is relevant for ψ. How (i) should work is well-understood. It is (ii) that holds the key to improve our understanding of conditionals. Our account has (i) a probabilistic component, using Popper functions; (ii) a relevance component, given via an algebraic structure of topics or subject matters. We present a probabilistic logic for simple indicatives, and argue that its (in)validities are both theoretically desirable and in line with empirical results on how people reason with conditionals. (shrink)

Against the background of high demand for protein-rich feed in the EU and the environmental degradation associated with intensive livestock farming, insect-based feed is discussed as a potential sustainable alternative to conventional feed. However, the establishment of such an innovation depends not only upon technical and economic feasibility, but also on social factors impacting acceptability. The aim of this paper was to determine the acceptability of different social actor groups towards the use of insects as livestock feed, and to gain (...) insights into value-based arguments leading to positive or negative attitudes and perceived benefits and risks. By means of qualitative content analysis, we analysed responses of an EU public consultation process linked to the authorization of insect protein in pig and poultry feed. We found a broad range of value-based arguments that influence the complex judgement process of acceptability that have been neglected in prior quantitative surveys. In particular, our results bring forward more critical voices, such as animal welfare concerns and scepticism that insect-based feed can contribute to a more sustainable livestock system. Based on these findings, we discuss whether insects as feed are a viable contribution to a sustainability-oriented transformation of the agri-food system. We conclude that under certain conditions (when raised on low-value organic side streams such as manure) insect-based livestock feed may contribute to incremental sustainability improvements. Overall, however, the innovation has limitations, not only in terms of regulatory conditions but especially with regard to ethical concerns. (shrink)

It is commonly accepted that those embedded conditionals of the type "if A, then if B, then C" we do understand, we understand as equivalent to sentences without embedded conditionals. This reduction is in classical logic achieved with the use of laws of exportation and importation. V. McGee even presents counterexamples to modus ponens which are based on the classical treatment of embedded conditionals and proposes to trade the validity of modus ponens for the validity of laws of importation and (...) exportation. It is argued that for a large class of indicative conditionals the laws of exportation and importation are invalid. With the help of Stalnaker's selection function theory of conditionals and the distinction between valid and reasonable inferences it is shown that modus ponens is valid but can be unreasonable, whereas laws of importation and exportation are invalid, but still reasonable. (shrink)

PurposeExisting research suggests that the competitive advantage provided by technological development depends to a large extent on the speed and coordination of the technology’s implementation, and on how adoptable the technological applications are considered. While accepting this argument, the authors consider the explanatory model to be inadequate. This study aims to contribute to the theoretical discussion by analysing institutionalised industrial relations and other organisation-level factors, which are important for workplace restructuring and societal change.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis is based on a representative nation-wide (...) work and working conditions survey (N= 4,100) from Finland, which includes a variety of themes, including practices, changes and well-being at work. Changes are understood as organisational changes, focusing on modern technologies such as robotisation and digitalisation.FindingsThe results indicate that occupational division at workplace (low-skilled vs high-skilled occupations) affects job insecurity and acceptance of technologies at work. The characteristics of workplaces, such as the employees’ participation and involvement in the development of the organisation, play a significant part in both the acceptance and the implementation and outcomes of the technological transformations in the workplace.Practical implicationsThe research provides new and interesting insights into working life practices. Furthermore, it reveals how technology acceptance and employment perspectives relate to working conditions and lessons learned from past reforms.Originality/valueThe authors consider current theories such as technology acceptance model at the micro level and that way rationalise the need for this study. This study shows the importance of individual, organisational and wider contextual factors in technology acceptance. (shrink)

L’énergie est essentielle pour le développement socioéconomique et la stabilité de chaque pays. Les changements et les défis auxquels fait face le secteur de l’énergie augmentent l’importance de l’acceptation sociale. Elle est essentielle pour la conception, la conduite et l’exploitation des projets énergétiques. Cet article vise à montrer l’importance de l’acceptabilité sociale, y compris dynamiquement, dans un contexte plus large : géographique, historique, culturel et institutionnel. À cet effet, l’auteure étudie le cas de l’extraction de gaz de schiste en Pologne (...) et présente l’opposition active à cette industrie dans la partie sud-est du pays. Elle tente, en outre, d’indiquer que les conditions sociales et économiques contemporaines mettent davantage l’accent sur le modèle démocratique de développement de l’énergie. L’exemple de la production de gaz de schiste en Pologne montre que l’acceptation sociale est un processus unidirectionnel, dans lequel les parties prenantes acceptent ou rejettent le projet, et où les questions énergétiques ne peuvent être considérées comme un manque de compréhension pour les spécificités, les traditions et le patrimoine d’une région. (shrink)

The question of whether humans represent grammatical knowledge as a binary condition on membership in a set of well-formed sentences, or as a probabilistic property has been the subject of debate among linguists, psychologists, and cognitive scientists for many decades. Acceptability judgments present a serious problem for both classical binary and probabilistic theories of grammaticality. These judgements are gradient in nature, and so cannot be directly accommodated in a binary formal grammar. However, it is also not possible to simply reduce (...) acceptability to probability. The acceptability of a sentence is not the same as the likelihood of its occurrence, which is, in part, determined by factors like sentence length and lexical frequency. In this paper, we present the results of a set of large-scale experiments using crowd-sourced acceptability judgments that demonstrate gradience to be a pervasive feature in acceptability judgments. We then show how one can predict acceptability judgments on the basis of probability by augmenting probabilistic language models with an acceptability measure. This is a function that normalizes probability values to eliminate the confounding factors of length and lexical frequency. We describe a sequence of modeling experiments with unsupervised language models drawn from state-of-the-art machine learning methods in natural language processing. Several of these models achieve very encouraging levels of accuracy in the acceptability prediction task, as measured by the correlation between the acceptability measure scores and mean human acceptability values. We consider the relevance of these results to the debate on the nature of grammatical competence, and we argue that they support the view that linguistic knowledge can be intrinsically probabilistic. (shrink)

Electroencephalography provides a non-invasive means to advancing our understanding of the development and function of the brain. However, the majority of the world’s population residing in low and middle income countries has historically been limited from contributing to, and thereby benefiting from, such neurophysiological research, due to lack of scalable validated methods of EEG data collection. In this study, we establish a standard operating protocol to collect approximately 3 min each of eyes-open and eyes-closed resting-state EEG data using a low-cost (...) portable EEG device in rural households through formative work in the community. We then evaluate the acceptability of these EEG assessments to young children and feasibility of administering them through non-specialist workers. Finally, we describe properties of the EEG recordings obtained using this novel approach to EEG data collection. The formative phase was conducted with 9 families which informed protocols for consenting, child engagement strategies and data collection. The protocol was then implemented on 1265 families. 977 children and 1199 adults provided resting-state data for this study. 259 children refused to wear the EEG cap or removed it, and 58 children refused the eyes-closed recording session. Hardware or software issues were experienced during 30 and 25 recordings in eyes-open and eyes-closed conditions respectively. Disturbances during the recording sessions were rare and included participants moving their heads, touching the EEG headset with their hands, opening their eyes within the eyes-closed recording session, and presence of loud sounds in the testing environment. Similar to findings in laboratory-based studies from high-income settings, the percentage of recordings which showed an alpha peak was higher in eyes-closed than eyes-open condition, with the peak occurring most frequently in electrodes at O1 and O2 positions, and the mean frequency of the alpha peak was found to be lower in children as compared to adults. We observed a deterioration in the EEG signal with prolonged device usage. This study demonstrates the acceptability, feasibility and utility of conducting EEG research at scale in a rural low-resource community, while highlighting its potential limitations, and offers the impetus needed to further refine the methods and devices and validate such scalable methods to overcome existing research inequity. (shrink)

Conditionals are sentences of the form 'If A, then B', and they play a central role in scientific, logical, and everyday reasoning. They have been in the philosophical limelight for centuries, and more recently, they have been receiving attention from psychologists, linguists, and computer scientists. In spite of this, many key questions concerning conditionals remain unanswered. While most of the work on conditionals has addressed semantical questions - questions about the truth conditions of conditionals - this book focuses on the (...) main epistemological questions that conditionals give rise to, such as: what are the probabilities of conditionals? When is a conditional acceptable or assertable? What do we learn when we receive new conditional information? In answering these questions, this book combines the formal tools of logic and probability theory with the experimental approach of cognitive psychology. It will be of interest to students and researchers in logic, epistemology, and psychology of reasoning. (shrink)

This paper argues that two widely accepted principles about the indicative conditional jointly presuppose the falsity of one of the most prominent arguments against epistemological iteration principles. The first principle about the indicative conditional, which has close ties both to the Ramsey test and the “or‐to‐if” inference, says that knowing a material conditional suffices for knowing the corresponding indicative. The second principle says that conditional contradictions cannot be true when their antecedents are epistemically possible. Taken together, these principles entail that (...) it is impossible to be in a certain kind of epistemic state: namely, a state of ignorance about which of two partially overlapping bodies of knowledge corresponds to one's actual one. However, some of the more popular “margin for error” style arguments against epistemological iteration principles suggest that such states are not only possible, but commonplace. I argue that the tension between these views runs deep, arising just as much for non‐factive attitudes like belief, presupposition, and certainty. I also argue that this is worse news for those who accept the principles about the indicative conditional than it is for those who reject epistemological iteration principles. (shrink)

Noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) has become widely available in recent years. While initially used to screen for trisomies 21, 18, and 13, the test has expanded to include a range of other conditions and will likely expand further. This paper addresses the ethical issues that arise from one particularly controversial potential use of NIPT: screening for adult‐onset conditions (AOCs). We report data from our quantitative survey of Australian NIPT users' views on the ethical issues raised by NIPT for AOCs. The (...) survey ascertained support for NIPT for several traits and conditions including AOCs. Participants were then asked about their level of concern around implications of screening for AOCs for the future child and parent(s). Descriptive and comparative data analyses were conducted. In total, 109 respondents were included in data analysis. The majority of respondents expressed support for NIPT screening for preventable (70.9%) and nonpreventable AOCs (80.8%). Most respondents indicated concern around potential harmful impacts associated with NIPT for AOCs, including the psychological impact on the future child and on the parent(s). Despite this, the majority of participants thought that continuation of a pregnancy known to be predisposed to an AOC is ethically acceptable. The implications of these data are critically discussed and used to inform the normative claim that prospective parents should be given access to NIPT for AOCs. The study contributes to a body of research debating the ethical acceptability and regulation of various applications of NIPT as screening panels expand. (shrink)

BackgroundNew disease-modifying ways to treat Parkinson’s disease (PD) may soon become a reality with intracerebral transplantation of cell products produced from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs). The aim of this study was to assess what factors influence preferences of patients with PD regarding stem-cell based therapies to treat PD in the future.MethodsPatients with PD were invited to complete a web-based discrete choice experiment to assess the importance of the following attributes: (i) type of treatment, (ii) aim of treatment, (iii) available (...) knowledge of the different types of treatments, (iv) effect on symptoms, and (v) risk for severe side effects. Latent class conditional logistic regression models were used to determine preference estimates and heterogeneity in respondents’ preferences.ResultsA substantial difference in respondents’ preferences was observed in three latent preference patterns (classes). “Effect on symptoms” was the most important attribute in class 1, closely followed by “type of treatment,” with medications as preferred to other treatment alternatives. Effect on symptoms was also the most important attribute in class 2, with treatment with hESCs preferred over other treatment alternatives. Likewise for class 3, that mainly focused on “type of treatment” in the decision-making. Respondents’ class membership was influenced by their experience in treatment, side effects, and advanced treatment therapy as well as religious beliefs.ConclusionsMost of the respondents would accept a treatment with products emanating from hESCs, regardless of views on the moral status of embryos. Preferences of patients with PD may provide guidance in clinical decision-making regarding treatments deriving from stem cells. (shrink)

Acceptability is a thoroughly normative epistemic notion. If a statement is acceptable, i.e. it is proper to take it as a premise, then one is justified in accepting it. We also hold that a statement is acceptable just in case there is a presumption of warrant in its favor. We thus see acceptability connected to epistemic normativity on the one hand and to warrant on the other. But there is a distinct tension in this dual connection. The dominant tradition in (...) modern epistemology sees epistemic justification as an internalist notion. We are justified in holding a belief just in case certain conditions are fulfilled of which we have privileged access. Warrant is an externalist notion. We have no privileged access to the conditions of warrant. Is our understanding of acceptability as both normative and definable in terms of presumption of warrant philosophically coherent? We shall argue that it is a philosophically coherent notion. Presumption of warrant, unlike warrant, is an internalist notion. Our position can be characterized as an externalist internal ism. It avoids the charge brought against externalism of allowing one to be justified in accepting some claim even if one has no evidence for it. We meet the classical internalist challenge that acceptance is normatively proper only if one has done one's epistemic duty and thus one is aware of the normative propriety of the acceptance by providing a non-deontological definition of epistemic justification, and arguing that this is still a sufficiently normative notion for acceptability. (shrink)

Recent studies indicate that indicative conditionals like "If people wear masks, the spread of Covid-19 will be diminished" require a probabilistic dependency between their antecedents and consequents to be acceptable (Skovgaard-Olsen et al., 2016). But it is easy to make the slip from this claim to the thesis that indicative conditionals are acceptable only if this probabilistic dependency results from a causal relation between antecedent and consequent. According to Pearl (2009), understanding a causal relation involves multiple, hierarchically organized conceptual dimensions: (...) prediction, intervention, and counterfactual dependence. In a series of experiments, we test the hypothesis that these conceptual dimensions are differentially encoded in indicative and counterfactual conditionals. If this hypothesis holds, then there are limits as to how much of a causal relation is captured by indicative conditionals alone. Our results show that the acceptance of indicative and counterfactual conditionals can become dissociated. Furthermore, it is found that the acceptance of both is needed for accepting a causal relation between two co-occurring events. The implications that these findings have for the hypothesis above, and for recent debates at the intersection of the psychology of reasoning and causal judgment, are critically discussed. Our findings are consistent with viewing indicative conditionals as answering predictive queries requiring evidential relevance (even in the absence of direct causal relations). Counterfactual conditionals in contrast target causal relevance, specifically. Finally, we discuss the implications our results have for the yet unsolved question of how reasoners succeed in constructing causal models from verbal descriptions. (shrink)

Some studies have reported that, under some circumstances, participants sometimes reject the truth of conditional premises and give incorrect uncertain conclusions to MP and MT, despite the standard instructions to assume the truth of the premises. Instructions that emphasise the logical nature of the task, on the other hand, increase the number of valid conclusions to these two inferences. In this paper, we examine two possible explanations for the influence of instructions on the production of valid conclusions: (1) instructions trigger (...) a logical mode of thinking that is appropriate for the task to be solved, and (2) instructions affect the way that retrieved information is used when constructing a mental representation of the premises. In order to compare these two hypothesis, we used conditional causal relations having either many or few disabling conditions (i.e. cases of P and not-Q) and presented them in four different instructional conditions. When presented with the standard instructions to suppose the premises to be true, MP and MT inferences show a relatively low percentage of valid conclusions. However, when the logical nature of the task and the necessity to assume the truth of the premises are emphasised, the number of valid conclusions greatly increases. Also, if disabling conditions are made explicit or generated before the presentation of these logical instructions, the performance on MP and MT is lower than when only the logical instructions are presented. Finally, the instructions had no effect on AC and DA. From these results, we concluded that the instructions had an effect on the use of retrieved information rather than on inducing different modes of thinking. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that the faculty of introspection, and the subjective states revealed in introspection, present difficulties to materialism. This paper argues that introspection can be construed physicalistically, and that the states introspected need not be imbued with phenomenally self-revealing qualities. The central argument is that introspected states are identified in terms of (but the terms denoting them not defined in terms of) the external circumstances in which they occur. It is also argued that this broadly behaviorist perspective can be (...) reconciled with the occurrence of ineffable experiences, and that it presents difficulties for the construal of pleasure offered by classical utilitarianism. (shrink)

We applied a technique borrowed from the field of bioethics to test whether justice-related factors influence laypersons’ decisions concerning business ethics. In the first experiment, participants judged the acceptability of remuneration policies and in the second that of executive bonuses. In each study, participants judged a set of 36 situations. To create the scenarios, we varied retributive justice—the amount of remuneration; procedural justice—the clarity of the procedure that determined the remuneration; distributive justice—the extent of the distribution of bonus payments amongst (...) employees; and restorative justice—a special compensation for hazardous working conditions or accidents at work. K-means clustering of all 36 judgments revealed four different personal positions in both experiments. One group of people readily accepted all situations. The other three groups’ judgments were mainly a function of distributive justice modulated in different ways by the context determined by the other variables. Furthermore, people conceive of distributive justice as categorical: Acceptability judgments only increase if companies give bonuses to all employees. Granting bonuses to a subset does not increase acceptability. Our results are useful for policy makers and provide business ethics researchers with a novel technique. (shrink)

Modus ponens is the argument from premises of the form If A, then B and A to the conclusion B. Nearly all participants agree that the modus ponens conclusion logically follows when the argument appears in this Basic form. However, adding a further premise can lower participants’ rate of agreement—an effect called suppression. We propose a theory of suppression that draws on contemporary ideas about conditional sentences in linguistics and philosophy. Semantically, the theory assumes that people interpret an indicative conditional (...) as a context-sensitive strict conditional: true if and only if its consequent is true in each of a contextually determined set of situations in which its antecedent is true. Pragmatically, the theory claims that context changes in response to new assertions, including new conditional premises. Thus, the conclusion of a modus ponens argument may no longer be accepted in the changed context. Psychologically, the theory describes people as capable of reasoning about broad classes of possible situations, ordered by typicality, without having to reason about individual possible worlds. The theory accounts for the main suppression phenomena, and it generates some novel predictions that new experiments confirm. (shrink)

Conditional excluded middle (CEM) is the following principe of counterfactual logic: either, if it were the case that φ, it would be the case that ψ, or, if it were the case that φ, it would be the case that not-ψ. I will first show that CEM entails the identity of indiscernibles, the falsity of physicalism, and the failure of the modal to supervene on the categorical and of the vague to supervene on the precise. I will then argue that (...) we should accept these startling conclusions, since CEM is valid. (shrink)

The appropriateness, or acceptability, of a conditional does not just ‘go with’ the corresponding conditional probability. A condition of dependence is required as well. In this paper a particular notion of dependence is proposed. It is shown that under both a forward causal and a backward evidential 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 empirical observations. (shrink)

This paper explores conditionals expressing that the antecedent makes a difference for the consequent. A 'relevantised' version of the Ramsey Test for conditionals is employed in the context of the classical theory of belief revision. The idea of this test is that the antecedent is relevant to the consequent in the following sense: a conditional is accepted just in case (i) the consequent is accepted if the belief state is revised by the antecedent and (ii) the consequent fails to be (...) accepted if the belief state is revised by the antecedent's negation. The connective thus defined violates almost all of the traditional principles of conditional logic, but it obeys an interesting logic of its own. The paper also gives the logic of an alternative version, the `Dependent Ramsey Test', according to which a conditional is accepted just in case (i) the consequent is accepted if the belief state is revised by the antecedent and (ii) it is rejected (e.g., its negation is accepted) if the belief state is revised by the antecedent's negation. This conditional is closely related to David Lewis's counterfactual analysis of causation. (shrink)

The sciences of recitation and hadith are like two parts of a whole that ensures the safe transmission of the two basic sources of religion. Each discipline has its own basic conditions for the establishment of the security of information transfer. In the science of hadith, narrations are divided into two as mutawatir and ahad, according to the number of narrators. According to the number of the narrators of each layer who provide the transmission of Ahad news, it was determined (...) as meshur, azîz and garîb, and the conditions of soundness were created to determine the accepted or rejected ones. Hese two branches of science had similar and different conditions. Memorizing the texts has been the main assurance in the transmission of the Qur'an and hadith from generation to generation. On the other hand, it is seen that the change of the Torah and the Bible is a result of not being memorized and preserved only in the books. The warning about staying away from avoiding mushafi in the transmission of the Qur'an; and the sahafi in the transmission of the hadith has brought to the fore the scholars who have deepened in these sciences and have a strong memory. The condition of soundness/acceptance, which is the correctness of the proof in the science of recitation, expresses a multidimensional reality of meaning, which also includes the condition that there should be no disconnection between the narrators in the science of hadith. In the study, first of all, the sound conditions of the science of recitation were examined in detail under separate headings. Secondly, the sound conditions of the science of hadith are explained. Finally, the sound conditions used by these two disciplines in the transmission of the narration and the related issues are discussed from a comparative perspective. (shrink)

Belief is a central focus of inquiry in the philosophy of religion and indeed in the field of religion itself. No one conception of belief is central in all these cases, and sometimes the term 'belief' is used where 'faith' or 'acceptance' would better express what is intended. This paper sketches the major concepts in the philosophy of religion that are expressed by these three terms. In doing so, it distinguishes propositional belief (belief that) from both objectual belief (believing (...) something to have a property) and, more importantly, belief in (a trusting attitude that is illustrated by at least many paradigm cases of belief in God). Faith is shown to have a similar complexity, and even propositional faith divides into importantly different categories. Acceptance differs from both belief and faith in that at least one kind of acceptance is behavioral in a way neither of the other two elements is. Acceptance of a proposition, it is argued, does not entail believing it, nor does believing entail acceptance in any distinctive sense of the latter term. In characterizing these three notions (and related ones), the paper provides some basic materials important both for understanding a person's religious position and for appraising its rationality. The nature of religious faith and some of the conditions for its rationality, including some deriving from elements of an ethics of belief, are explored in some detail. (shrink)

In this paper, we present three necessary conditions for morally responsible animal research that we believe people on both sides of this debate can accept. Specifically, we argue that, even if human beings have higher moral status than nonhuman animals, animal research is morally permissible only if it satisfies (a) an expectation of sufficient net benefit, (b) a worthwhile-life condition, and (c) a no unnecessary-harm/qualified-basic-needs condition. We then claim that, whether or not these necessary conditions are jointly sufficient conditions of (...) justified animal research, they are relatively demanding with the consequence that many animal experiments may fail to satisfy them. (shrink)

In everyday discourse groups or collectives are often said to believe this or that. The author has previously developed an account of the phenomenon to which such collective belief statements refer. According to this account, in terms that are explained, a group believes that p if its members are jointly committed to believe that p as a body. Those who fulfill these conditions are referred to here as collectively believing* that p. Some philosophers – here labeled rejectionists – have argued (...) that collective belief* is not belief but rather acceptance. This paper presents several arguments against rejectionism. One has to do with the proper methodology for arriving at an account of belief. Two address rejectionist claims to the effect that collective beliefs* lack key features of belief in general, the features in question being “aiming at truth” and having a particular relation to the will. A fourth notes that there is a phenomenon more apt for the label of “collective acceptance” than is the phenomenon of collective belief*. (shrink)

The paper presents a non-monotonic inference relation on a language containing a conditional that satisfies the Ramsey Test. The logic is a weakening of classical logic and preserves many of the ‘paradoxes of implication’ associated with the material implication. It is argued, however, that once one makes the proper distinction between supposing that something is the case and accepting that it is the case, these ‘paradoxes’ cease to be counterintuitive. A representation theorem is provided where conditionals are given a non-bivalent (...) semantics and epistemic states are represented via preferential models. (shrink)

If doing good is often beyond the call of duty, instances of the All or Nothing Problem abound. I have argued elsewhere that we should solve this problem by accepting a principle that I call Optimific Altruism, which has interesting implications both for the correct account of supererogation and for our obligations to give to charity. However, Theron Pummer and Daniel Muñoz have argued that we should instead solve this problem by rejecting an inference rule that I call Conditional Obligation. (...) I here recap my preferred solution and argue against this alternative. (shrink)