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Full Idea
The mistake philosophers have made, in trying to understand the conditional, is to assume that its function is to make a statement about how the world is (or how other possible worlds are related to it), true or false, as the case may be.
Gist of Idea
It is a mistake to think that conditionals are statements about how the world is
Source
Dorothy Edgington (Do Conditionals Have Truth Conditions? [1986], 1)
Book Ref
'A Philosophical Companion to First-Order Logic', ed/tr. Hughes,R.I.G. [Hackett 1993], p.28
A Reaction
'If pigs could fly we would never catch them' may not be about the world, but 'if you press this switch the light comes on' seems to be. Actually even the first one is about the world. I've an inkling that Edgington is wrong about this. Powers!
| 13853 | It is a mistake to think that conditionals are statements about how the world is [Edgington] |
| 13855 | A conditional does not have truth conditions [Edgington] |
| 13854 | Conditionals express what would be the outcome, given some supposition [Edgington] |
| 13857 | Truth-functional possibilities include the irrelevant, which is a mistake [Edgington] |
| 13859 | X believes 'if A, B' to the extent that A & B is more likely than A & ¬B [Edgington] |