Belief, truth, and indicative conditional propositions

The overarching aim of this dissertation is to show that indicative conditional sentences do express propositions having objective truth-values. I put forward this position in response to arguments given by so-called NTV (no truth-value) theorists---principally, Ernest Adams, Dorothy Edgington, and Jonathan Bennett---who maintain that there are no indicative conditional propositions.; NTV theorists found their understanding of indicative conditionals on Ernest Adams' hypothesis that the probability of an indicative conditional is identical to the conditional probability of the consequent of the conditional given its antecedent---viz., Pr(A → C) = Pr(C|A). After detailing this program, I go on to discuss some of the triviality results that have been put forward against Adams' hypothesis by David Lewis and others. These triviality proofs lead to the well-known conclusion that Adams' hypothesis can only be adopted at the 'cost' of denying that the probabilities assigned to indicative conditionals are probabilities of truth. As a corollary of this result, those philosophers who accept Adams' hypothesis commonly conclude that indicative conditional sentences do not express true/false propositions at all.; In the second chapter of my dissertation I offer a number of reasons for doubting the truth of Adams' hypothesis. These criticisms focus on the relations that Adams' hypothesis bears to both the Ramsey test for conditional credence and the traditional probability theoretic definition of conditional probability. Then, in the third chapter I argue that, independent of the triviality results raised against Adams' hypothesis, there are no persuasive arguments for the thesis that indicative conditional sentences do not express true/false propositions.; I move on in the fourth and fifth chapters to presenting a positive account of indicative conditionals in such a way as to preserve the intuition that objective truth-values do apply to conditionals. I put forward a context dependent theory of indicative conditionals in which it is claimed that in different epistemic contexts a single indicative conditional sentence can be used to express different conditional propositions. This positive account is formalized by my development of a theory of epistemically context dependent variably strict conditionals.