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philosophy R
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Conditionals icholas Rescher r
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This book by distinguished philosopher Nicholas Rescher seeks to clarify the idea of what a
conditional says by elucidating the information that is normally transmitted by its utterance. Conditionals
The result is a unified treatment of conditionals based on epistemological principles rather than
the semantical principles in vogue over recent decades. This approach, argues Rescher, makes it
easier to understand how conditionals actually function in our thought and discourse. In its
concern with what language theorists call pragmatics—the study of the norms and principles
governing our use of language in conveying information—Conditionals steps beyond the limits
of logic as traditionally understood and moves into the realm claimed by theorists of artificial
intelligence as they try to simulate our actual information-processing practices.
The book’s treatment of counterfactuals essentially revives an epistemological approach
proposed by F. P. Ramsey in the 1920s and developed by Rescher himself in the 1960s but since
overshadowed by the now-dominant possible-worlds approach. Rescher argues that the increasingly
evident liabilities of the possible-worlds strategy make a reappraisal of the older style of
analysis both timely and desirable. As the book makes clear, an epistemological approach
demonstrates that counterfactual reasoning, unlike inductive inference, is not a matter of
abstract reasoning alone but one of good judgment mon sense.
icholas Rescher is University Professor of Philosophy and Chairman of the Center for
NPhilosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. In the course of a long and distinguished
academic career, he has published more than three hundred articles in scholarly journals, has
contributed to many encyclopedias and reference works, and has written some hundred books
in various areas of phil