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Indicative And Subjunctive Conditionals

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Abstract

. My dissertation, consisting of three independent papers, argues for a version of Stalnaker's semantics of indicative conditionals, similar to the approach taken by Heim (1992). In the first paper, I argue that competing approaches to indicatives -- the strict-conditional theories in the style of Kratzer (1986) and the approaches that rely on Adams' Thesis -- give the wrong predictions for dominance conditionals, sentences like 'If I win, I'll be better off than if I lose'. In the second paper, I argue that competing approaches give the wrong predictions for singular whether-conditionals, sentences like 'If I go, I'll go whether you like it or not'. In the third paper, I argue that the central task of a unified theory of indicative and subjunctive conditionals is to explain the presuppositions of both kinds of conditional, and defend the claim that such a unified theory is best built on the foundation of the Heimian variant of Stalnaker's indicative semantics.

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2013-01-28

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semantics; conditionals

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Committee Chair

Eklund, Matti

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Hodes, Harold Theodore
Silins, Nicholas

Degree Discipline

Philosophy

Degree Name

Ph. D., Philosophy

Degree Level

Doctor of Philosophy

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Government Document

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dissertation or thesis

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