Overview

Philosophers and logicians have long debated how best to understand conditional or hypothetical sentences. William G. Lycan has a distinctive approach to this debate, attending not just to the semantics of such sentences, but equally to their syntax. He shows how insights from linguistic theory help to illuminate problems about the meaning and function of conditionals. For instance, philosophers and logicians have had problems analysing the locutions 'only if', 'unless', and 'even if'. Lycan sets out a general semantic theory of conditionals which works for all such sentences; he assigns meanings to them in a way that explains how and why those meanings depend upon features of utterance context. According to Lycan's theory the 'if'-clauses refer to items called 'events', 'circumstances', or 'conditions'.Real Conditionals gives at last the definitive presentation of this original approach to a topic at the intersection of philosophy, logic, and linguistics. Lycan's characteristically lively and witty expository style ensures that it can be enjoyed by readers from all three disciplines.

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9780199285518

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After reading [Lycan's] work, it's hard to take seriously work that does not share [his] methodology...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<br>

Author Information

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

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