William G Lycan

Real Conditionals

Revised and Thumb Indexed edition. Sprache: Englisch.

gebunden , 240 Seiten

ISBN 0199242070

EAN 9780199242078

Veröffentlicht November 2001

Verlag/Hersteller Sydney University Press

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Beschreibung

Logicians have written a great deal on the semantics of conditional sentences. This book contends that insufficient attention has been paid to the syntax of conditionals, as investigated by linguists. Syntactic data are used to make the case that "If"-clauses tacitly quantify over items called "events," "circumstances," or "conditions." This motivates a semantic theory of conditionals that concentrates on "only if," "even if" and "unless" as well as on "If...then." The theory is then applied to a number of examples from the literature, and its predictions and successes compare favorably to those of competing semantic theories.

Portrait

William Lycan is William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina.

Pressestimmen

There's alot to like about this book, not least its witty, even charming, style. Lycan considers more examples, from more diverse sources, than most writers. The theory he presents is innovative and at least aims to be comprehensive. And of course there are some good arguments for it. The Philosophical Review Real Conditionals is a great contribution to the literature, and if it causes more theorists to pay serious attention to Lycan's Event Theory, that would be an excellent consequence. The Philosophical Review