Indicative Conditionals
Updated 2026-09-10
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
Indicative conditionals are statements such as if A then C, or C if A, where A is the antecedent and C the consequent; understanding both parts and the conditional structure suffices to understand the whole. The entry focuses on their truth conditions: whether an indicative conditional is equivalent to the material implication, and the semantic and pragmatic debates this raises, including Grice's pragmatic defense of truth-functional readings.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Run hypotheticals: use if-then structures to isolate a variable and inspect its consequences. - Judge truth: distinguish conditionals from material implication and avoid calling them true when the antecedent is false. - Check arguments: confirm that antecedent and consequent are genuinely connected rather than merely juxtaposed.
Anchor fast decisions
The crux is the probability and truth value of conditionals: if the truth of if A then C equals the truth of A implies C, then the assertability of the conditional should equal the probability of the corresponding truth-value combination. Ramsey's test shows that people's confidence in a conditional tracks the probability of C given A rather than the probability of the material implication, pressing truth-functional accounts.
MINIMUM ACTION
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Source support: Explicit
- plato.stanford.eduhttps://plato.stanford.edu/entries/conditionals/verified
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