If P Then Q: Conditionals and the Foundations of Reasoning (PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY THEIR PAST AND PRESENT)

Conditionals play a central role in our everyday thinking about the world and in our deliberations about how we should act. In this volume, David Sanford provides an account of the history of dispute about conditional statements, which are fundamental both to logic and to a great deal of general philosophy. Without presuming either knowledge of the history or prior acquaintance with the philosophical topics that lead to an interest in conditionals, the book introduces the reader to the theoretical and philosophical problems they pose. The first part of the volume traces the history of theories of conditional sentences from the Stoics to the present, examining ancient and medieval logic and the importance of conditionals in philosophy to modern thinkers such as Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Goodman and Stalnaker. In the latter part of the book, the author sets out a new theory of conditionals. This book should be of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates and academics of philosophical logic.