Partial Semantics for Iterated if-Clauses

Abstract

This paper argues in favor of a partial semantics for indicative conditionals, along the lines of a proposal made by Belnap in the seventies: conditionals only have a truth value if their antecedent is true, and in this case, their truth value equals the truth value of their consequent. I argue that this semantics offers a way outof the impasse following Gibbard’s (1981) famous proof that if ??(???) and (???)?? are equivalent, ?cannot be stronger than material implication.