{"title":"Ramsey's Lost Counterfactual","authors":"Caterina Sisti","doi":"10.1080/01445340.2022.2110011","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"In contemporary works on conditionals, the Ramsey test is a procedure for the evaluation of conditional sentences. There are several versions of the test, all inspired by a footnote by the British philosopher and mathematician Frank Ramsey, in his General Propositions and Causality. However, no study on Ramsey's own account of conditionals has been put forth so far. Furthermore, the footnote seems to cover indicative conditionals only, and this has led to the belief that no account of counterfactuals can be found in Ramsey's work. In this paper, I recover Ramsey's account of counterfactuals and show that it is sketched in the footnote too. The result is a well-developed account of counterfactuals that resembles many contemporary ones. But Ramsey uses the same approach also for other types of conditionals, and this casts doubts on the current criteria for the classification of this type of sentences.","PeriodicalId":55053,"journal":{"name":"History and Philosophy of Logic","volume":"44 1","pages":"311 - 326"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7000,"publicationDate":"2022-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"History and Philosophy of Logic","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01445340.2022.2110011","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"HISTORY & PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
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Abstract
In contemporary works on conditionals, the Ramsey test is a procedure for the evaluation of conditional sentences. There are several versions of the test, all inspired by a footnote by the British philosopher and mathematician Frank Ramsey, in his General Propositions and Causality. However, no study on Ramsey's own account of conditionals has been put forth so far. Furthermore, the footnote seems to cover indicative conditionals only, and this has led to the belief that no account of counterfactuals can be found in Ramsey's work. In this paper, I recover Ramsey's account of counterfactuals and show that it is sketched in the footnote too. The result is a well-developed account of counterfactuals that resembles many contemporary ones. But Ramsey uses the same approach also for other types of conditionals, and this casts doubts on the current criteria for the classification of this type of sentences.
期刊介绍：
History and Philosophy of Logic contains articles, notes and book reviews dealing with the history and philosophy of logic. ’Logic’ is understood to be any volume of knowledge which was regarded as logic at the time in question. ’History’ refers back to ancient times and also to work in this century; however, the Editor will not accept articles, including review articles, on very recent work on a topic. ’Philosophy’ refers to broad and general questions: specialist articles which are now classed as ’philosophical logic’ will not be published.
The Editor will consider articles on the relationship between logic and other branches of knowledge, but the component of logic must be substantial. Topics with no temporal specification are to be interpreted both historically and philosophically. Each topic includes its own metalogic where appropriate.
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