In this talk, Lassiter will report on a series of experiments which examine judgments about epistemic modals, both in unembedded contexts and in the consequents of indicative and counterfactual conditionals. Building on these results and recent probabilistic theories of epistemic language, he will propose a probabilistic version of Kratzer's restrictor theory of conditionals that identifies the indicative/ counterfactual distinction with Pearl's distinction between conditioning and intervening in probabilistic graphical models.

Lunch will be served.