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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!
| 7803 | Modal logic began with translation difficulties for 'If...then' [Lewis,CI, by Girle] |
| 14286 | In nearby worlds where A is true, 'if A,B' is true or false if B is true or false [Stalnaker] |
| 14283 | A conditional probability does not measure the probability of the truth of any proposition [Lewis, by Edgington] |
| 13768 | Validity can preserve certainty in mathematics, but conditionals about contingents are another matter [Edgington] |
| 13853 | It is a mistake to think that conditionals are statements about how the world is [Edgington] |
| 15422 | Three conditionals theories: Materialism (material conditional), Idealism (true=assertable), Nihilism (no truth) [Burgess] |
| 15423 | It is doubtful whether the negation of a conditional has any clear meaning [Burgess] |
| 14623 | Strict conditionals imply counterfactual conditionals: □(A⊃B)⊃(A□→B) [Williamson] |
| 10992 | The point of conditionals is to show that one will accept modus ponens [Read] |
| 10989 | The standard view of conditionals is that they are truth-functional [Read] |
| 11017 | Some people even claim that conditionals do not express propositions [Read] |