Towards a Probabilistic Analysis for Conditionals and Unconditionals

摘要

The thesis that the probability of a conditional 'if A, C' is the corresponding conditional probability of C, given A, enjoys wide currency among philosophers and growing empirical support in psychology. In this paper I ask how a probabilisitic account of conditionals along these lines could be extended to unconditional sentences, i.e., conditionals with interrogative antecedents. Such sentences are typically interpreted as equivalent to conjunctions of conditionals. This raises a number of challenges for a probabilistic account, chief among them the question of what the probability of a conjunction of conditionals should be. I offer an analysis which addresses these issues by extending the interpretation of conditonals in Bernoulli models to the case of unconditionals.