Suppose and Tell

What does 'if' mean? Timothy Williamson presents a controversial new approach to understanding conditional thinking, which is central to human cognitive life. He argues that in using 'if' we rely on psychological heuristics, fast and frugal methods which can lead us to trust faulty data and prematurely reject simple theories.

Timothy Williamson is Wykeham Professor of Logic at the University of Oxford and Whitney Griswold Visiting Professor at Yale University. He has also taught at MIT, Princeton, Edinburgh, Trinity College Dublin, Chinese University of Hong Kong, and elsewhere. He works on logic, philosophy of language, epistemology, metaphysics, and metaphilosophy. His books include Doing Philosophy, Tetralogue, Modal Logic as Metaphysics, and The Philosophy of Philosophy. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Member of the Academia Europaea.

Part I: If
Chapter 1 The Value of Conditionals
Chapter 2 The Suppositional Rule
Chapter 3 Consequences of the Suppositional Rule
Chapter 4 Heuristics within Heuristics
Chapter 5 Conditional Testimony
Chapter 6 The Role of Conditional Propositionals
Chapter 7 More Challenges
Chapter 8 Interactions between Plain Conditionals and Quantifiers
Part II: Would If
Chapter 9 Conditionals and Abduction
Chapter 10 The Interaction of 'If' and 'Would': Semantics and Logic
Chapter 11 The Interaction of 'If' and 'Would': Heuristics
Chapter 12 Is 'Would' Hyperintensional?
Chapter 13 More on the Interaction of 'Would' with Context
Chapter 14 Thought Experiments and 'Would'
Chapter 15 Worlds and Meaning
Chapter 16 Conclusion: Heuristics, Pragmatics