Logic
While the material conditional operator used in logic (i.e.) is sometimes read aloud in the form of a conditional sentence (i.e. "if p, then q"), the intuitive interpretation of conditional statements in natural language does not always correspond to the definition of this mathematical relation. Modelling the meaning of real conditional statements requires the definition of an indicative conditional, and contrary-to-fact statements require a counterfactual conditional operator, formalized in modal logic.
Read more about this topic: Conditional Sentence
Famous quotes containing the word logic:
“It is the logic of our times,
No subject for immortal verse—
That we who lived by honest dreams
Defend the bad against the worse.”
—Cecil Day Lewis (1904–1972)
“Our argument ... will result, not upon logic by itself—though without logic we should never have got to this point—but upon the fortunate contingent fact that people who would take this logically possible view, after they had really imagined themselves in the other man’s position, are extremely rare.”
—Richard M. Hare (b. 1919)
“The usefulness of madmen is famous: they demonstrate society’s logic flagrantly carried out down to its last scrimshaw scrap.”
—Cynthia Ozick (b. 1928)