Sponsored by
University of Connecticut Humanities Institute

University of Connecticut Graduate Student Senate		 University of Connecticut College of Arts and Sciences

University of Connecticut Research Foundation

UPDATE(2-6-06): Updated Speaker Schedule and Room Location.
UPDATE(2-7-06): If you are interested in attending some or all of the conference, please send an email to: franklinscott[[at]]gmail[[dot]]com. We are making preparations for the party and dinner.
UPDATE(3-13-06): Updated Registration Information and Conference Schedule. We will start to post abstracts and links to papers in the next few days.
UPDATE(3-27-06): Added titles and some links to papers.
UPDATE(4-6-06): Added another title and a paper.

Topic

The topic of the conference is the semantics of conditionals. Work on conditionals has traditionally been a source of fruitful philosophical theories and, more recently, linguists have started making progress using tools from their discipline. This conference attempts to demonstrate recent work on the semantics of conditionals from a variety of different perspectives. We have invited representatives from three major traditions:

Linguistic: Linguists, naturally, have tended to rely on syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic data for their theories of conditionals.

Epistemological: Those philosophers who emphasize the role of conditionals in scientific reasoning and belief-revision.

Logical: Those philosophers who focus on the logical structure of language and emphasize the relationship between conditionals and valid arguments.

As William Lycan, our keynote speaker, recently wrote, "Though there has been and should be overlap between between the three bodies of work, the approaches are really different paradigms, in the sense that they have different priorities, draw on different sources of evidence, and weigh the same evidence differently even when they do share it. This has resulted in interestingly perspectival conflicts..." (Lycan's 2005 "Review of Bennett's A Philosophical Guide to Conditionals" in Mind 114:116-9)

Our conference aims to contribute to collegial and mutually beneficial interaction between these different fields.

For more information, please visit the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on conditionals written by Dorothy Edgington.

Speakers

  • Kai von Fintel (MIT)
    "How Ordinary Are Conditionals?"

  • William Lycan (North Carolina)
    “Conditional-Assertion Theories of Conditionals”

  • David Sanford (Duke)
    “Epistemic Requirements of Inference, Truthmakers for Conditionals, and Stand-offs”


  • Gunnar Björnsson (Göteborg)

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    Time, Place and Format

    The conference will be held: Family Studies Building Room 216

    The conference will run for three days: April 7th, 2006 through April 9th, 2006.

    The tentative schedule is as follows: Speaker Schedule

    Registration

    The conference is free to attend, but we request advance notice if you plan on coming to the dinner on the first night or the party on the second night. The dinner will be on Friday at Bangkok Noy, a Thai restaurant right off campus. The party will be on Saturday at Sam Wheeler's home in Willington, CT. Both events are Bring Your Own Beverages. Directions will be provided at the conference. If you're interested in coming to either event, please email Franklin Scott at franklinscott at gmail dot com.

    Organizing Committee

    Brian Leahy   and   Franklin Scott

    Directions

    Directions to the Storrs campus (including maps of the campus and important parking details) may be found here.

    Accommodation

    Speakers will be staying at the Nathan Hale Inn, which is located on campus and within walking distance of the main venue. (Reservations may be made directly with the Nathan Hale Inn via the contact details provided here.) Given its convenience (and easy parking spaces), we recommend the Nathan Hale Inn; however, other (and in many cases cheaper) options are listed on this page.

    Franklin Scott 2005 ¶ Last modified: April 6th, 2006