Possibilities and the parallel meanings of factual and counterfactual conditionals
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Possibilities and the parallel meanings of factual and counterfactual conditionals Orlando Espino 1 & Ruth M. J. Byrne 2 & P. N. Johnson-Laird 3,4
# The Psychonomic Society, Inc. 2020
Abstract The mental model theory postulates that the meanings of conditionals are based on possibilities. Indicative conditionals—such as “If he is injured tomorrow, then he will take some leave”—have a factual interpretation that can be paraphrased as It is possible, and remains so, that he is injured tomorrow, and in that case certain that he takes some leave. Subjunctive conditionals, such as, “If he were injured tomorrow, then he would take some leave,” have a prefactual interpretation that has the same paraphrase. But when context makes clear that his injury will not occur, the subjunctive has a counterfactual paraphrase, with the first clause: It was once possible, but does not remain so, that he will be injured tomorrow. Three experiments corroborated these predictions for participants’ selections of paraphrases in their native Spanish, for epistemic and deontic conditionals, for those referring to past and to future events, and for those with then clauses referring to what may or must happen. These results are contrary to normal modal logics. They are also contrary to theories based on probabilities, which are inapplicable to deontic conditionals, such as, “If you have a ticket, then you must enter the show.” Keywords Conditionals . Conditional probabilities . Counterfactuals . Mental models . Probabilities . Semantics
Conditionals are a notorious cause of controversy in cognitive science. They are the propositions that can be expressed in English using the grammatical form “If A, then C,” where both A and C are clauses. At the center of disagreement is their meaning (Nickerson, 2015). The consequences of the disagreement concern the truth or falsity of conditional assertions, their probability whether qualitative or numerical (e.g., “highly probable” vs. “70% probable”), their inferential consequences, and their mental representations. Philosophers, linguists, and psychologists have explored four principal approaches to their meaning. The truth-functional approach defines their meaning as a function of the truth values—true or
* Orlando Espino [email protected] 1
Departamento de Psicología Cognitiva, Universidad de la Laguna, Campus de Guajara, 38205 Tenerife, Spain
2
School of Psychology and Institute of Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin, University of Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
3
Emeritus, Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA
4
Visiting scholar, Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY, USA
false—of the clauses they connect. The possible-worlds approach defines their meaning in terms of an infinite set of hypothetical worlds, which include the real one, and which each fix the truth values of all propositions about it. The probabilistic approach defines their meaning in terms of the conditional probabilities of their then clauses given their if clauses. And the m
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