Logic & Philosophy of Language

Mario Günther (MG) worked on the semantics of conditionals and because, and how they relate to beliefs. 

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• "Ramsey's Conditionals" (Synthese, with Caterina Sisti) puts forth an epistemic theory of conditionals in the spirit of Frank Ramsey that unifies indicative and subjunctive as well as qualitative and probabilistic conditionals. The theory is based on a reinterpretation of the notion of conditional degree of belief.   

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• "On the Ramsey Test Analysis of 'Because'" (Erkenntnis, with Holger Andreas) strengthens the Ramsey Test for conditionals by a suspension of judgment: you believe 'if A then C' if and only if, after suspending judgment on the antecedent A and the consequent C, you come to believe C if you assume A. The suspension of judgment ensures that a conditional's antecedent is relevant for its consequent, unlike the semantics of variably strict conditionals championed by Robert Stalnaker and David Lewis. The strengthened Ramsey Test gives rise to powerful analyses of token causation (see Metaphysics), to an analysis of reasons or explanations, and a corresponding analysis of 'because' in natural language. The analysis treats because as if when the antecedent is (believed to be) true.  

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• "Causal and Evidential Conditionals" (Minds and Machines) provides a causal model semantics for causal and evidential conditionals by embedding a causal model in an agent's belief state. Unlike other causal model semantics, his accounts rather well for evidential conditionals, such as Angelika Kratzer's "If the flag had been up, the king would have been in the castle."

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• ​"Disjunctive Antecedents for Causal Models" (Proceedings of the 21th Amsterdam Colloquium) extends Halpern and Pearl's causal model semantics by disjunctive antecedents, resulting in a generalization of their definition of actual causation. 

  

• "A Connexive Conditional" (Logos and Episteme) proposes a connexive conditional that is both classical and intuitive.

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• "Defining Selection Functions"(Logica Yearbook 2018, with Holger Andreas) shows how to define orderings of plausibility and entrenchment based on finite belief bases. 

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