Whamit!

The Weekly Newsletter of MIT Linguistics

LingPhil Reading Group 12/11 - Matt Mandelkern (Oxford)

Speaker: Matt Mandelkern (Oxford)
Title: Constructing the conditional
Date and time: Monday, December 11, 1-2pm
Location: 32-D769
Abstract:

I argue, contra the dominant line in the linguistics literature, that conditionals validate Conditional Excluded Middle in full generality, and invalidate Duality:

Conditional Excluded Middle: ‘If p, q, or if p, not q’ is always true

Duality: ‘If p, q iff Not: if p, might not q’

I argue that we can, however, give a semantics for conditionals which makes these predictions, without abandoning the insights of Kratzer’s restrictor analysis.