Conditio

Conditio complete

After four years, the Conditio project has reached its end. The Publications page includes links to some of our 2026 publications, while others are undergoing peer review.

The project pursued two main objectives: 1. To test the leading theories of indicative and counterfactual conditionals; and 2. To develop an adequate and consistent semantic theory of conditional imperatives.

With regard to the first objective, the project’s outputs contributed to the creation of a rich and diverse database of test cases involving conditionals and inferences in which conditional statements play a key role. The analysis of these heterogeneous data demonstrated that it is possible to provide a more comprehensive evaluation of theories of conditionals. At the same time, this objective encounters the limitations imposed by the heterogeneous theoretical assumptions underlying the individual semantic approaches. Consequently, any systematic testing of competing theories of conditionals will require agreement on a set of fundamental background assumptions concerning language, the aims of reasoning, the appropriate level of abstraction and idealization, and the scope of the phenomena that a given theory is intended to explain or predict.

With regard to the second objective, the project succeeded in developing two formal models of hypothetical imperatives and proposing a framework within which normative conative facts can be represented.

Key publications