{"id":18372,"date":"2026-10-26T06:08:57","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T10:08:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/?p=18372"},"modified":"2026-10-31T10:25:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T14:25:17","slug":"lf-reading-group-kai-von-fintel-mit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/2026\/10\/26\/lf-reading-group-kai-von-fintel-mit\/","title":{"rendered":"LF Reading Group 10\/28 - Kai von Fintel (MIT)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Speaker:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kaivonfintel.org\/about\/\">Kai von Fintel<\/a> (MIT), presenting joint work with (An)Thony Gillies (University of Arizona)<br clear='none'\/>\n<strong>Title:<\/strong> Yo-yo conditionals and counterfactual supposition<br clear='none'\/>\n<strong>Time:<\/strong> Wednesday, October 28, 1-2pm<br clear='none'\/>\n<strong>Location:<\/strong> 32-D461<\/p>\n<p>Abstract:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>There are two ways of articulating counterfactual thought experiments about what would have been the case if some (specific) things had been the case: counterfactual supposition and counterfactual conditionals. We introduce a novel puzzle about a class of iterated counterfactual thought experiments, the problem of yo-yo conditionals like If it had rained then if it hadn&#8217;t rained the seats would be wet. We show that yo-yo conditionals raise serious issues for all extant theories of counterfactual conditionals. There are some fixes we can and will consider, but lurking there&#8217;s a hard problem that we find both intriguing and infuriating.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Speaker: Kai von Fintel (MIT), presenting joint work with (An)Thony Gillies (University of Arizona) Title: Yo-yo conditionals and counterfactual supposition Time: Wednesday, October 28, 1-2pm Location: 32-D461 Abstract: There are two ways of articulating counterfactual thought experiments about what would have been the case if some (specific) things had been the case: counterfactual supposition and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faculty-news","category-talks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18372","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\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18372"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18379,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18372\/revisions\/18379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}