[hist-analytic] Conditional vs. Hypothetical

[rh1 at york.ac.uk]

Dear JL,

I'm not clear what I should help with, but if it's Philo's description of 
what we call the material conditional, he ddn't use a word for it. He said, 
The connected proposition is true when it is not the case that it begins 
with the true and ends with the false. (The whole passage is in Bochenski's 
History of Formal Logic, at 20.07, and the original is at AM VIII.113 in 
your Sextus Empiricus (lovely Loeb). Bochenski gives some explanation about 
the avoidance of any word meaning `conditional'
  Probably you know all this, and wanted something else.
    All the best,
        Roland





On Feb 13 2010, Jlsperanza at aol.com wrote:

>In a message dated 2/13/2010 3:51:19 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
>Baynesr at comcast.net writes:
>"Thus in the Rudiments the state of war is  hypothetical 
>condition, got by a purely logical abstraction." (p.  28)
>
> ---- Not to nitpick, but perhaps you are reading too much of your own 
> good healthy robust and Lewisian logical background onto poor ol' 
> McPherson (you haven't disclosed his affiliation yet! :)).
>     We should play a little with that lovely Greek  word,
>           -thesis
>it yields: hypo-thesis -- hypo-thetical. Latin: sup-positio,  suppositio.
>              pro-thesis                                     prae-positio
>              thesis                                                  
>positio
>              apothesis                                         re-positio
>                                    I never understood, for example, the 
>logic of prae-sub-positio!
>
> --- But 'conditional'? Are we thinking material, here? Incidentally, 
> while I think I know that Gk. for 'if' is 'ei', I'm less sure what word 
> Philo (who invented the 'horseshoe' of the logicians, apparently) gave 
> for 'material conditional'. The 'material' sounds obscenely Aristotelian 
> (vs. formal-implication, no doubt).
>   I recently received a query as to Grice's "Indicative Conditionals" 
> for example. This is the title that he used in WoW for his 4th William 
> James Lecture. Note "conditional", but, and he does consider 'subjective 
> conditionals" which he doesn't think are truth-functional. Etc.
> 
> The terminology, while Stoic -- and Grice would be familiar with it via 
> Benson Mates's researches on Stoic Logic, could be (and R. Hall may help 
> us here) 'grammatical' (via Dionysos Thrax) here:
> 
> after all, unlike 'and' and 'or' -- the other propositional connectors 
> used by the stoics,
> 
>  'if' (Greek 'ei', Latin 'si')
> 
>  imports a sub-ordination
> 
>             p            --->     q
> 
>    protasis                    apodosis
> 
> 
>--- In this connection, I treasure one of the most pedantic talks  I ever 
>had to wear. My thesis advisor, E. A. Rabossi, discussing with  Beatrix 
>Lavandera, a linguist.
> 
> Every time Lavandera said 'protasis' and 'apodosis' in her comments, 
> Rabossi would go, "I hope both Dr. Lavandera and the audience will 
> forgive me for using 'antecedent' and 'consequent' instead!
> 
>JLS
>