Daniel Rothschild on Timothy Wiliamson.

Barristers in England are obliged to follow the ‘cab rank rule’, according to which they must take any case offered to them, as long as they have time in their schedule and can agree on fees. This rule is designed to ensure that unpopular people and causes can get legal representation. In philosophy, by contrast, we know we need no structural rule to ensure that seemingly hopeless causes receive representation from the brightest minds. And so we find Timothy Williamson, who famously defended epistemicism about vagueness over a quarter of a century ago, turning in his new book to another unpopular cause, the view that the meaning of ‘if’ is given by the material conditional.

Rothschild, Daniel, ‘Living in a Material World: A Critical Notice of Suppose and Tell: The Semantics and Heuristics of Conditionals by Timothy Williamson’, Mind 132.525 (2023), 208–233.

À propos.

Étiquettes.

Daniel Rothschild, Timothy Williamson, conditionals, philo.

Mises à jour.

• J.P. Loo (12 juin 2025): Finished migration from joshualoo.net.