Gastvortrag von Prof. Branden Fitelson (Northeastern Univ. Boston, USA): „How to model the probabilities of conditionals“ [Einladung]

Seminarraum VI der Theologischen Fakultät (Karl-Rahner-Platz 3, 1. Stock)

David Lewis (and others) have famously argued against Adams‘s Thesis (that the probability of a conditional is the conditional probability of its consequent, given antecedent) by proving various „triviality results.“ In this paper, I argue for two theses -- one negative and one positive. The negative thesis is that the „triviality results“ do not support the rejection of Adams‘s Thesis, because Lewisian „triviality based“ arguments against Adams‘s Thesis rest on an implausibly strong understanding of what it takes for some credal constraint to be a rational requirement (an understanding which Lewis himself later abandoned in other contexts). The positive thesis is that there is a simple (and plausible) way of modeling the probabilities of conditionals, which (a) obeys Adams‘s Thesis, and (b) avoids all of the existing triviality results. 

Branden Fitelson is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern University. Before teaching at Northeastern, Branden held teaching positions at Rutgers, UC-Berkeley, San José State, and Stanford and visiting positions at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy at LMU-Munich (MCMP @ LMU) and the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation at the University of Amsterdam (ILLC @ UvA).