The Logic and Metaphysics Workshop will meet on October 23rd from 4:15-6:15 (NY time) in-person at the Graduate Center (Room 4419) for a talk by Melissa Fusco (Columbia).

Title: Diachronic reasoning with conditionals

Abstract: I will discuss a hybrid decision theory, coinciding sometimes with (traditional) Evidential Decision Theory, but usually with (traditional) Causal Decision Theory, which is inspired by recent work on unified and fully compositional approaches to the probabilities of conditionals. The hybrid theory features a few other loci of interest: the partitionality of acts A ∈ {A} fails, and close attention is paid to how one might (dis)confirm chance hypotheses under the umbrella of the Principal Principle. On this theory, the probabilities of conditionals play a role in underwriting a theory of imaging that follows Skyrms’s Thesis (Skyrms, 1981, 1984). Moreover, the credences it is epistemically rational to assign to these conditionals guides updating on one’s own acts. This implies some departures from Conditionalization, which I defend on epistemological grounds.

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