Timothy Williamson - What if the impossible happened?

UConn Logic Group - Annual Logic Lecture, March 24, 2016
logic.uconn.ed...
Timothy Williamson (Oxford) - What if the impossible happened?
Abstract:
"If 5+7 had turned out to be 13, everyone would have danced in the streets with joy.” That conditional is true according to standard theories of conditionals, simply because it is impossible for 5 + 7 to turn out to be 13. Many philosophers regard such consequences as obviously wrong. I will explain why significant issues are at stake in this dispute, how our judgments about such matters may be misled by fallible heuristics, and why the standard view may be right after all.