The UConn Logic Group will host Kai von Fintel (MIT) as this semester’s (technically, last year’s) Scholar of Consequence. Kai will visit us for two days, starting with an appearance in Magdalena Kaufmann’s Semantics Seminar on Thursday (11/12, 12:30-3:30pm) and culminating in his Logic Lecture on Friday, November 13, 2-4pm, Homer Babbidge Library Class of 1947 Room. Contact Magdalena Kaufmann with questions about the seminar. There is room for individual appointments on Thursday and Friday. Contact Stefan Kaufmann to reserve a slot. Title and abstract of his Logic Colloquium Talk are below.

Yo-yo conditionals and counterfactual supposition

joint work with (An)Thony Gillies (University of Arizona)

There are two ways of articulating counterfactual thought experiments about what would have been the case if some (specific) things had been the case: counterfactual supposition and counterfactual conditionals. We introduce a novel puzzle about a class of iterated counterfactual thought experiments, the problem of yo-yo conditionals like “If it had rained then if it hadn’t rained the seats would be dry”. We show that yo-yo conditionals raise serious issues for extant theories of counterfactual conditionals. There are some fixes we can and will consider, but lurking there’s a hard problem that we find both intriguing and infuriating.

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