On the Road to Conditionals: Truth Conditions and Acceptability Conditions

• Main Authors: Ching Hui Su, 蘇慶輝
• Other Authors: Wen-fang Wang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/18923023760138858644

博士 === 國立中正大學 === 哲學所 === 96 === 　　A theory of conditionals is supposed to explain all (or at least most) linguistic phenomena concerning ‘if’. Since what we are concerned with are linguistic phenomena whose occurrences are due to the meaning of ‘if’, what we are looking for is a semantic theory of conditionals that explains these phenomena. So far there are three semantic theories in the literature on conditionals: truth-functional semantics, non-truth-functional semantics (possible world semantics), and no-truth-value semantics (probabilistic semantics). In this dissertation, I will introduce these three theories and try to defend truth-functional semantics. Although the topic is conditionals, I don''t mean to include here every kind of conditional as my explanandum. To make the topic manageable, I will first make some distinctions between various kinds of conditionals, and focus on so-called indicative conditionals. Then, I will introduce three semantic theories which attempt to explain indicative conditionals. Finally, I will argue that neither non-truth- functional semantics nor no-truth-value semantics is better than truth-functional semantics, for we can explain away those apparent counterexamples to truth-functional semantics by a pragmatic approach.