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Language, Epistemology, Metaphysics, and Mind Research Interest Group Talk (Ginger Schulteis, Chicago)

Friday September 25, 2020, 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm

Ginger Schultheis

The Language, Epistemology, Metaphysics, and Mind Research Group welcomes Ginger Schultheis, an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at University of Chicago. Most of Dr. Schultheis’s research is in epistemology, with a particular interest in belief. She has worked on the relationship between belief and credence, on whether epistemic rationality is permissive, whether we can believe at will, and whether it can be rational to have imprecise credences. She also has research interests in formal semantics, especially the semantics of modals and counterfactuals.

Join the talk at:

https://utoronto.zoom.us/j/99760788601

Talk Title

Counterfactual Probability

Talk Abstract

Stalnaker’s Thesis about indicative conditionals is, roughly, that the probability one ought to assign to an indicative conditional equals the probability that one ought to assign to its consequent conditional on its antecedent. The thesis seems right. If you draw a card from a standard 52-card deck, how confident are you that the card is a diamond if it’s a red card? To answer this, you calculate the proportion of red cards that are diamonds—that is, you calculate the probability of drawing a diamond conditional on drawing a red card. 
Skyrms’s Thesis about counterfactual conditionals is, roughly, that the probability that one ought to assign to a counterfactual equals one’s rational expectation of the chance, at a relevant past time, of its consequent conditional on its antecedent. This thesis also seems right. If you decide not to enter a 100-ticket lottery, how confident are you that you would have won had you bought a ticket? To answer this, you calculate the prior chance—that is, the chance just before your decision not to buy a ticket—of winning conditional on entering the lottery. In this talk, I develop a neo-Stalnakerian, uniform theory of conditionals that allows us to derive a plausible, context-sensitive version of Skyrms’s Thesis from a plausible, context-sensitive version of Stalnaker’s Thesis, together with David Lewis’s Principal Principle.

 

About the Language, Epistemology, Metaphysics and Mind Research Group

One of six departmental research interest groups, the Language, Epistemology, Metaphysics and Mind Group undertakes research in philosophy of mind, philosophy of cognitive science, traditional and formal epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of language.

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Details

Date:
Friday September 25, 2020
Time:
3:00 pm - 5:00 pm
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Venue

Online

Organizer

Language, Epistemology, Metaphysics and Mind Group
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