Suchergebnisse

AbstractThere are several issues with the standard approach to the relationship between conditionals and assertions, particularly when the antecedent of a conditional is (or may be) false. One prominent alternative is to say that conditionals do not express propositions, but rather make conditional assertions that may generate categorical assertions of the consequent in certain circumstances. However, this view has consequences that jar with standard interpretations of the relationship between proofs and assertion. Here, I analyse this relationship, and say that, on at least one understanding of proof, conditional assertions may reflect the dynamics of proving, which (sometimes) generate categorical assertions. In particular, when we think about the relationship between assertion and proof as rooted in a dialogical approach to both, the distinction between conditional and categorical assertions is quite natural.

AbstractIn this paper, we propose a unified account of conditionals inspired by Frank Ramsey. Most contemporary philosophers agree that Ramsey's account applies to indicative conditionals only. We observe against this orthodoxy that his account covers subjunctive conditionals as well—including counterfactuals. In light of this observation, we argue that Ramsey's account of conditionals resembles Robert Stalnaker's possible worlds semantics supplemented by a model of belief. The resemblance suggests to reinterpret the notion of conditional degree of belief in order to overcome a tension in Ramsey's account. The result of the reinterpretation is a tenable account of conditionals that covers indicative and subjunctive as well as qualitative and probabilistic conditionals.

Contends that the Personal Responsibility & Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) impelled two basic transformations of the US welfare system. First, it changed the foundations of the system from entitlement to conditional benefits. Second, it officially encoded the perspective that full-time employment, along with work-conditioned benefits, would make citizens able to raise themselves & their families out of poverty. These changes in welfare occurred in a context in which most features of US citizenship are indeed conditional. Welfare reform, far from establishing either an aberration or a novel notion of citizenship, is in fact reshaping welfare policy to be more consistent with a prior, though greatly unspoken, grasp of what is here termed conditional citizenship. References. K. Coddon

Some obligations are conditional such that act A is morally optional, but if one chooses A, one is required to do act B rather than some other less valuable act C. Such conditional obligations arise frequently in research ethics, in the philosophical literature, and in real life. They are controversial: how does a morally optional act give rise to demanding requirements to do the best? Some think that the fact that a putative obligation has a conditional structure, so defined, is a strike against its being a genuine obligation. I argue that conditional obligations are to be expected in a moral theory that has moral options.