A Philosophical Guide to Conditionals / Edition 1

by Jonathan Bennett

Overview

Conditional sentences are among the most intriguing and puzzling features of language, and analysis of their meaning and function has important implications for, and uses in, many areas of philosophy. Jonathan Bennett, one of the world's leading experts, distils many years' work and teaching into this Philosophical Guide to Conditionals, the fullest and most authoritative treatment of the subject. An ideal introduction for undergraduates with a philosophical grounding, it also offers a rich source of illumination and stimulation for graduate students and professional philosophers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199258871
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	06/19/2003
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	404
Product dimensions:	9.22(w) x 6.40(h) x 0.85(d)

About the Author

Jonathan Bennett, who now lives on an island near Vancouver, British Columbia, was formerly Lecturer in Moral Science at the University of Cambridge, and Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia and then at Syracuse University. He has held visiting positions at Cornell, Michigan, Pittsburgh, and Princeton, and has been a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and a visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. He is Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the British Academy.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction2. The Material Condition: Grice3. The Material Condition: Jackson4. The Equation5. The Equation Attacked6. The Subjectivity of Indicative Conditionals7. Indicative Conditionals Lack Truth Values8. Uses of Indicative Conditionals9. The Logic of Indicative Conditionals10. Subjunctive Conditionals - First Steps11. The Competition for 'Closest'12. Unrolling from the Antecedent Time13. Forks14. Reflections on Legality15. Truth at the Actual World16. Subjunctive Conditionals and Probability17. 'Even If...'18. Backward Subjunctive Conditionals19. Subjunctive Conditionals and Time's Arrow20. Support Theories21. The Need for Worlds22. Relating the Two Kinds of Conditional23. Unifying the Two Kinds of ConditionalReferencesIndex of PersonsIndex of Topics

Editorial Reviews

"The hulking literature on the logic and semantics of conditionals is cunning and daunting, and few thinkers on the world stage are equipped to coral and tame the beast as Bennet has... His writing is disarmingly casual and witty-quite remarkably so for such dense subject matter... Bennet's achievement is nothing less than monumental." — The Review of Metaphysics

From the Publisher