The Department of Logic & Philosophy of Science Colloquium Series presents

"In Defense of a Naive Conditional Epistemology"
with Andrew Bacon, Assistant Professor, University of Southern California

Friday, January 25, 2013
3:00 p.m.
Social Science Tower, Room 777

Numerous triviality results have been directed at a collection of views that tie the probability of a conditional sentence to the conditional probability of the consequent on its antecedent. In this talk, Bacon will argue that this identification makes little sense if conditional sentences are context sensitive. The best alternative, he suggests, is a version of the thesis which states that if your total evidence is E then the evidential probability of a conditional evaluated in a context where E is salient is the probability of the consequent given the antecedent. The biggest challenge to this thesis comes from the 'static' triviality arguments developed by Stalnaker, Hajek and Hall. It is argued that these arguments rely on invalid principles of conditional logic and that the thesis is consistent with a reasonably strong logic that does not include the principles in question.

For further information, please contact Patty Jones, patty.jones@uci.edu or 949-824-1520.