{"id":10807,"date":"2018-02-12T06:00:02","date_gmt":"2018-02-12T10:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whamit.mit.edu\/?p=10807"},"modified":"2018-02-11T18:58:23","modified_gmt":"2018-02-11T22:58:23","slug":"mit-colloquium-216-lucas-champollion-nyu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/2018\/02\/12\/mit-colloquium-216-lucas-champollion-nyu\/","title":{"rendered":"MIT Colloquium 2\/16 - Lucas Champollion (NYU)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Speaker<\/strong>: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.champollion.com\">Lucas Champollion<\/a>\u00a0(NYU)<br clear='none'\/>\n <strong>Title<\/strong>:\u00a0Two switches in the theory of\u00a0<span class=\"inbox-inbox-m_3309129158191801217m_4440770731976188684inbox-lG\">counterfactuals<\/span>: A study of truth conditionality and minimal change<br clear='none'\/>\n <strong>Time<\/strong>: Friday, February 16th, 3:30-5pm\u00a0<br clear='none'\/>\n <strong>Place<\/strong>: 32-155<br clear='none'\/>\n <strong>Abstract<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>I report on a comprehension experiment on counterfactual conditionals based on a context involving two switches (joint work with Ivano Ciardelli and Linmin Zhang). We found that the truth-conditionally equivalent clauses\u00a0<i>(i) switch A or switch B is down<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0<i>(ii) switch A and switch B are not both up<\/i>\u00a0make different semantic contributions when embedded in counterfactual antecedents. Assuming compositionality, this contradicts the textbook view that meaning can be identified with truth conditions. This finding has a clear explanation in inquisitive semantics: truth-conditionally equivalent clauses may be associated with different propositional alternatives, each of which counts as a separate counterfactual assumption. Related results from the same experiment challenge the common Stalnaker-Lewis interpretation of counterfactuals as involving minimizing change with respect to the actual state of affairs. We propose to replace the idea of minimal change by a distinction between foreground and background for a given counterfactual assumption: the background is held fixed in the counterfactual situation, while the foreground can be varied without any minimality constraint. (This talk presents work reported in a paper to appear in the journal\u00a0<i>Linguistics and Philosophy<\/i>. Preprint at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/ling.auf.net\/lingbuzz\/003200\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">http:\/\/ling.auf.net\/lingbuzz\/003200<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Speaker: Lucas Champollion\u00a0(NYU) Title:\u00a0Two switches in the theory of\u00a0counterfactuals: A study of truth conditionality and minimal change Time: Friday, February 16th, 3:30-5pm\u00a0 Place: 32-155 Abstract: I report on a comprehension experiment on counterfactual conditionals based on a context involving two switches (joint work with Ivano Ciardelli and Linmin Zhang). We found that the truth-conditionally equivalent [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-announcements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10807"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10809,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10807\/revisions\/10809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}