Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
"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
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. [371]-379) and indexes.
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. Introduction
2. The Material Condition: Grice
3. The Material Condition: Jackson
4. The Equation
5. The Equation Attacked
6. The Subjectivity of Indicative Conditionals
7. Indicative Conditionals Lack Truth Values
8. Uses of Indicative Conditionals
9. The Logic of Indicative Conditionals
10. Subjunctive Conditionals - First Steps
11. The Competition for 'Closest'
12. Unrolling from the Antecedent Time
13. Forks
14. Reflections on Legality
15. Truth at the Actual World
16. Subjunctive Conditionals and Probability
17. 'Even If...'
18. Backward Subjunctive Conditionals
19. Subjunctive Conditionals and Time's Arrow
20. Support Theories
21. The Need for Worlds
22. Relating the Two Kinds of Conditional
23. Unifying the Two Kinds of Conditional
References
Index of Persons
Index of Topics