Abstract

Throughout the twentieth-century, philosophers of language and logic have produced massive amounts of literature on conditionals, and the issues involved continue to receive much scholarly attention today. In our daily lives, conditionals are commonly used in communication, in decision-making, and in drawing inferences. My project focuses on the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of conditional statements in classical logic, modal logic, and ordinary English. The major issues that I take up include the classification, interpretation, and meaning(s) of conditional statements. Roughly the first half of my thesis focuses on the syntax and semantics of three conditionals of logic, namely, the material, strict, and counterfactual conditionals. After considering each of these individually, I acknowledge the many troubles that arise when each is analyzed philosophically. Next, in order to evaluate the pragmatics of ordinary English conditionals, I focus on H. P. Grice’s theory of conversational implicature. Here, too, several troubles arise. I proceed by presenting several philosophical accounts, all of which focus on the discrepancies between the material conditional and the ordinary English ‘if’. The study of the ordinary English ‘if’ led me to consider some ordinary English if-statements, the meanings of which are clearly not conditional. Although many philosophers recognize that there are non-conditional ordinary English uses of ‘if’, there is no comprehensive account to be found in the literature on conditionals. Hence, I produce the most comprehensive explanation of non-conditional if-statements, or pseudo-conditionals, that I am aware of. Lastly, I suggest a novel approach to conditionals designed to account for the classification and meaning of the conditional statements of logic and ordinary English.