Indicative conditionals

By Jackson, Frank

Examples of indicative conditionals are ‘If it rained, then the match was cancelled’ and ‘If Alex plays, Carlton will win’. The contrast is with subjunctive or counterfactual conditionals, ...

Semantics

By Crimmins, Mark

Semantics is the systematic study of meaning. Current work in this field builds on the work of logicians and linguists as well as of philosophers. Philosophers are interested ...

Logic, philosophy of

By Forbes, Graeme

Philosophy of logic can be roughly characterized as those philosophical topics which have emerged either from the technical development of symbolic (mathematical) logic, or from the motivations that ...

Semantics, informational

By McLaughlin, Brian P.; Rey, Georges

Information-theoretic semantics (ITS) attempts to provide a naturalistic account of the conditions under which a psychological state such as a belief or desire has a particular mental content: ...

Counterfactual conditionals

By Doring, Frank

‘If bats were deaf, they would hunt during the day.’ What you have just read is called a ‘counterfactual’ conditional; it is an ‘If…then…’ statement the components of ...

Language, philosophy of

By Crimmins, Mark

Philosophical interest in language, while ancient and enduring (see Language, ancient philosophy of; Language, medieval theories of; Language, Renaissance philosophy of; Language, early modern philosophy of), has blossomed ...

Predicate calculus

By Smiley, Timothy

The predicate calculus is the dominant system of modern logic, having displaced the traditional Aristotelian syllogistic logic that had been the previous paradigm. Like Aristotle’s, it is a ...

Semantics, possible worlds

By Perry, John R.

Possible worlds semantics (PWS) is a family of ideas and methods that have been used to analyse concepts of philosophical interest. PWS was originally focused on the important ...

Dispositions

By Mumford, Stephen

Disposition is a term used in metaphysics usually to indicate a type of property, state or condition. Such a property is one that provides for the possibility of ...

Logical constants

By McCarthy, Timothy

A fundamental problem in the philosophy of logic is to characterize the concepts of ‘logical consequence’ and ‘logical truth’ in such a way as to explain what is ...

Meaning and truth

By Williams, Stephen G.

Analytic philosophy has seen a resurgent interest in the possibility of explaining linguistic meaning in terms of truth, which many philosophers have seen as considerably more tractable than ...

Dispositions

‘Disposition’ is a term used in metaphysics usually to indicate a type of property, state or condition. Such a property is one that provides for the possibility of ...