| 19232 | In ordinary language a conditional statement assumes that the antecedent is true [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: In our ordinary use of language we always understand the range of possibility in such a sense that in some possible case the antecedent shall be true. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], II) | |
| A reaction: Peirce is discussing Diodorus, and proposes the view nowadays defended by Edgington, though in the end Peirce defends the standard material conditional as simpler. I suspect that this discussion by Peirce is not well known. |
| 14279 | Asking 'If p, will q?' when p is uncertain, then first add p hypothetically to your knowledge [Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: If two people are arguing 'If p, will q?' and are both in doubt as to p, they are adding p hypothetically to their stock of knowledge, and arguing on that basis about q; ...they are fixing their degrees of belief in q given p. | |
| From: Frank P. Ramsey (Law and Causality [1928], B 155 n) | |
| A reaction: This has become famous as the 'Ramsey Test'. Bennett emphasises that he is not saying that you should actually believe p - you are just trying it for size. The presupposition approach to conditionals seems attractive. Edgington likes 'degrees'. |
| 22432 | Normally conditionals have no truth value; it is the consequent which has a conditional truth value [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Ordinarily the conditional is not thought of as true or false at all, but rather the consequent is thought of as conditionally true or false given the antecedent. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Mr Strawson on Logical Theory [1953], III) | |
| A reaction: At first this seems obvious, but a conditional asserts a relationship between two propositions, and so presumably it is true if that relationship exists. 'Is it actually true that if it is Monday then everyone in the office is depressed?'. |
| 15722 | Conditionals are pointless if the truth value of the antecedent is known [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The ordinary conditional loses its point when the truth value of its antecedent is known. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §46) | |
| A reaction: A beautifully simple point that reveals a lot about what conditionals are. |
| 14282 | On the supposition view, believe if A,B to the extent that A&B is nearly as likely as A [Edgington] |
| Full Idea: Accepting Ramsey's suggestion that 'if' and 'on the supposition that' come to the same thing, we get an equation which says ...you believe if A,B to the extent that you think that A&B is nearly as likely as A. | |
| From: Dorothy Edgington (Conditionals (Stanf) [2006], 3.1) |
| 13854 | Conditionals express what would be the outcome, given some supposition [Edgington] |
| Full Idea: It is often necessary to suppose (or assume) that some epistemic possibility is true, and to consider what else would be the case, or would be likely to be the case, given this supposition. The conditional expresses the outcome of such thought processes. | |
| From: Dorothy Edgington (Do Conditionals Have Truth Conditions? [1986], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is the basic Edgington view. It seems to involve an active thought process, and imagination, rather than being the static semantic relations offered by possible worlds analyses. True conditionals state relationships in the world. |