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antecedent, if we came to know it was true, would provide us with excellent evidence that the consequent is true. The second statement, on the other hand, expresses a causal or metaphysical relation: It says that the world was set up so that the consequent would have been made true if the antecedent were true. One will accept that second statement to the extent that one thinks the world was set up in that way. (Conspiracy theorists who think there was a back-up shooter, for instance, may accept the second statement.)
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The first statement says something that is certainly true, and will be accepted as such by anyone who is convinced that somebody shot
Kennedy. It's clearly true because it expresses this epistemic relation between its antecedent (the "if"-clause) and its consequent (the "then"-clause): The
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Because of these differences, epistemic possibility bears on the actual world in ways that subjunctive possibility does not. Suppose, for example, that one wants to know whether or not to take an umbrella before going outside. If one is told "It's
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The parallel distinction arises between types of conditionals (if-then statements). Consider the difference between the epistemic connection expressed by an
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it is raining outside"—in the sense of epistemic possibility—then that would weigh on whether or not I take the umbrella. But if one is told that "It's
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Although these two statements are often confused with one another, they mean two different things: the first says something
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The contrast is best explained by example. Consider the two statements:
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about the vagaries of war; the second says something that is certainly
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relates a statement under consideration to the current state of our
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conditional and the causal or metaphysical relation expressed by a
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actually obtain, we know that what it says is false).
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