Different kinds of conditionals: Coin tosses and kangaroos in the forest of alternative possibilities
Final Report Abstract
Conditional sentences ("If A then C") pose theoretical as well as formal challenges in philosophy and in linguistics. In both subjects their analysis is the subject of current research. When is a conditional sentence true; is it at all appropriate to assess a conditional as true or false? Which content-related or formal conditions on the antecedent A and the consequent C are plausible? Which interdisciplinary links between linguistics and philosophy can lead to new insights? The project aimed at a novel, unified analysis of conditional sentences that starts from a fine-grained distinction of types of conditionals and which employs a formal framework theory that can represent different types of possibilities. The project thus combined hitherto unconnected insights from the philosophical study of formal and metaphysical aspects of kinds of possibilities and from the linguistic study of the interaction of modality and temporality in the compositional structure of conditional sentences. Methodologically, interdisciplinarity and formal modelling were the guiding principles. A major focus was on the distinction between temporal and modal alternative possibilities ("the coin could have shown heads" versus "kangaroos could have no tails"), which have to be treated differently formally because of their different relation to actuality. We were able to formulate a unified analysis that encompasses both temporal alternatives in our world, which can be adequately represented by tree-like ordered branching structures, and modal alternatives, which are best represented via different possible worlds. Our formal framework consists of a (modal) forest of (temporally tree-like ordered) alternative possibilities. In particular, this analysis sheds light on the sometimes confusing use of the past tense in conditionals ("If you had come tomorrow, we would have gone for a nice walk") by understanding the role of past morphology as an indicator of temporal and/or modal distance. Further research in the project concerned conditionals with impossible antecedents ("If I were you ...") and the role of alternative possibilities in action.
Publications
-
"The asymmetry of past tense". Vortrag beim 22nd Amsterdam Colloquium, Amsterdam, 18.–20. Dezember 2019
Karawani, H.; Kauf, C. & Zeijlstra, H.
-
“How to derive "you should" from "I would"”. Eingeladener Vortrag (online) beim Kolloquium der New York University Semantics Group, 13. November 2020.
Karawani, H.
-
“The asymmetry of past tense”. Vortrag bei der Konferenz Semantics & Pragmatics 3, Leibniz-ZAS, Berlin. 7.–8. Oktober 2020, mit veranstaltet vom International Laboratory for Logic, Language and Formal Philosophy and the School of Linguistics at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moskau
Karawani, H.
-
"Philosophical and linguistic classifications of conditionals". Vortrag beim XXV. Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Philosophie, online, 5.–9. September 2021
Karawani, H.
-
"Impersonal rules: The case of general prohibitives". Vortrag bei Sinn und Bedeutung 27, Prag, 14.–16. September 2022
Frühauf, F.; Karawani, H.; Koev, T.; Korotkova, N.; Penka, D. & Skibra. D.
-
"Past and Present Futurates: Epistemic Modality and prospective aspect". Eingeladener Vortrag beim Workshop Looking for Non- Future Tense, Laboratoire de Linguistique de Nantes, 19.–20. Mai 2022.
Karawani, H.
-
“Let’s build an Anscombe box”: assessing Anscombe’s rebuttal of the statistics objection against indeterminism-based free agency. Synthese, 200(2).
Müller, Thomas
-
“Repurposed past and (un)certainty in counterfactuals”. Eingeladener Keynote-Vortrag bei der International Conference on Tense and Aspect in Conditionals, Paris, 2.–4. November 2022
Karawani, H.
-
"Aspects of aspect in counterfactuals". In: Tense and aspect in Counterfactuals, hg. von G. Sharma und M. Ippolito, Berlin: de Gruyter.
Karawani, H. & Halpert, C.
-
"Vanilla rules: The "no ice cream"construction". In Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 27, hg. von Maria Onoeva, Anna Staňková und Radek Šimík, Prag: Institute of Czech Language and Theory of Communication, Faculty of Arts, Charles University"Vanilla rules: The "no ice cream" construction". In Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 27, hg. von Maria Onoeva, Anna Staňková und Radek Šimík, Prag: Institute of Czech Language and Theory of Communication, Faculty of Arts, Charles University
Frühauf, F.; Karawani, H.; Koev, T.; Korotkova, N.; Penka, D. & Skibra. D.
-
Taming Pereboom’s Wild Coincidences. Mind, 132(527), 789-802.
Müller, Thomas
