0000000000190046
AUTHOR
David E. Over
Probabilistic inferences from conjoined to iterated conditionals
Abstract There is wide support in logic, philosophy, and psychology for the hypothesis that the probability of the indicative conditional of natural language, P ( if A then B ) , is the conditional probability of B given A, P ( B | A ) . We identify a conditional which is such that P ( if A then B ) = P ( B | A ) with de Finetti's conditional event, B | A . An objection to making this identification in the past was that it appeared unclear how to form compounds and iterations of conditional events. In this paper, we illustrate how to overcome this objection with a probabilistic analysis, based on coherence, of these compounds and iterations. We interpret the compounds and iterations as cond…
On Trivalent Logics, Compound Conditionals, and Probabilistic Deduction Theorems
In this paper we recall some results for conditional events, compound conditionals, conditional random quantities, p-consistency, and p-entailment. Then, we show the equivalence between bets on conditionals and conditional bets, by reviewing de Finetti's trivalent analysis of conditionals. But our approach goes beyond de Finetti's early trivalent logical analysis and is based on his later ideas, aiming to take his proposals to a higher level. We examine two recent articles that explore trivalent logics for conditionals and their definitions of logical validity and compare them with our approach to compound conditionals. We prove a Probabilistic Deduction Theorem for conditional events. Afte…
Probabilities of conditionals and previsions of iterated conditionals
Abstract We analyze selected iterated conditionals in the framework of conditional random quantities. We point out that it is instructive to examine Lewis's triviality result, which shows the conditions a conditional must satisfy for its probability to be the conditional probability. In our approach, however, we avoid triviality because the import-export principle is invalid. We then analyze an example of reasoning under partial knowledge where, given a conditional if A then C as information, the probability of A should intuitively increase. We explain this intuition by making some implicit background information explicit. We consider several (generalized) iterated conditionals, which allow…
Centering and Compound Conditionals under Coherence
There is wide support in logic , philosophy , and psychology for the hypothesis that the probability of the indicative conditional of natural language, \(P(\textit{if } A \textit{ then } B)\), is the conditional probability of B given A, P(B|A). We identify a conditional which is such that \(P(\textit{if } A \textit{ then } B)= P(B|A)\) with de Finetti’s conditional event, B|A. An objection to making this identification in the past was that it appeared unclear how to form compounds and iterations of conditional events. In this paper, we illustrate how to overcome this objection with a probabilistic analysis, based on coherence, of these compounds and iterations. We interpret the compounds a…