mr. gower on conditionals

Mind Association

Mr. Gower on ConditionalsAuthor(s): Jonathan HarrisonSource: Mind, New Series, Vol. 83, No. 329 (Jan., 1974), pp. 103-105Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2252800 .

Accessed: 28/06/2014 12:23

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Oxford University Press and Mind Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extendaccess to Mind.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 82.146.58.77 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 12:23:14 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=oup

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mind

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2252800?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Mr. Gower on Conditionals JONATHAN HARRISON

In his paper on 'Conditionals' (Mind, July 197I) Mr. B. S. Gower argues that, if I was right in maintaining (in 'Unfulfilled Conditionals and the Truth of their Constituents', in Mind, July I968) that 'If it rains, England will win' asserts something-that England will win-only conditionally upon its raining, I must be wrong in maintaining that the contradictory of 'If it rains, England will win' is 'If it rains, England will not win'. His reasons for saying this are these: (i) 'Just as we cannot contradict Jones's assertion that his children are asleep unless we assume that Jones has children, so also we cannot contradict someone who claims that England will win if it rains, unless we assume that he has asserted that England will win.' (2) 'If it rains, England will win' and 'If it rains, England will not win' cannot be contradictories, for 'there are circumstances, namely when the antecedent is false, in which they both fail to be true'.

(i) It is simply not true that we cannot contradict someone who asserts that England will win if it rains, unless we assume that he has asserted

t hat England will win. It is true that we could not contradict what he asserts by saying 'England will not win' unless he had asserted that England will win, but we do not say 'England will not win'; we say 'If it rains, England will not win'. I think Gower is assuming that anyone who says 'If it rains, England will win' has either not asserted anything at all, or he has asserted that England will win. If it does not rain, he has not asserted anything at all. If it does rain, he has asserted that England will win. Both of these contentions are wrong. The first is just as wrong as the parallel contention that someone who says 'I promise to play tennis with you, if it is fine' has not promised anything at all if it is not fine. He has promised something, namely to play tennis, if it is fine. The second is just as wrong as the parallel contention that someone who says 'I promise to play tennis with you if it is fine' has, if it does turn out to be fine, promised to play tennis with me. He has not done this, however, for to say he had would imply that he had said something like 'I promise to play tennis with you', which is just what he has not said. Similarly, if we consider the simple English word 'said' (which sometimes means 'asserted'), 'He said that England would win if it rains', together with 'It did not rain' does not entail that he did not say anything at all, and, together with 'It did rain' does not entail 'He said England would win'. (Compare 'If it is fine, he promised to play tennis with me; it is fine; therefore he promised to play tennis with me' which is valid, with 'He promised to-play-tennis- with-me-if-it-is-fine; it is fine; therefore he promised to-play-tennis- with-me', which is not valid.)

For these reasons, incidentally, I am now inclined to prefer to talk about a conditional commitment rather than a conditional assertion, and

103



104 J. HARRISON:

to this extent I am perhaps agreeing with Mr. Gower. For asserting now seems to be something that either you do or you do not, and anyone saying 'England will win if it rains' has asserted something unconditionally enough, i.e. has actually performed the act of asserting something, just as someone saying 'I promise to play tennis with you, if it is fine' has performed the act of promising something. But, by performing the actual act of asserting 'If it rains, England will win' we enter into a commitment which is only conditional. If it rains, we are committed to England's win- ning, are right if England does win, and are wrong if England does not win; but if it does not rain, we are not committed to anything at all, and are neither right if England win, nor wrong if England do not win. Similarly, if we say 'I promise to play tennis with you, if it is fine' we are, if it is fine, committed to doing something, playing tennis, but, if it is not fine, we are not committed to doing anything at all, and so, in the event of its not being fine, we have neither kept our promise if we play tennis, nor broken it if we do not.

(2) Gower is quite right in thinking that 'If it rains, England will win' and 'If it rains, England will not win' will neither of them be true (or false) in the event of its not raining. He jumps too easily from this, however, to the conclusion that they cannot be contradictories. If to say that two propositions p and q are contradictories means that either p must be true and q false, or q must be true and p false, then 'If it rains, England will win' and 'If it rains, England will not win' are not contradictories. If, however, when you say that two propositions, p and q, are contradictories you mean that they cannot both be true and cannot both be false, then 'If it rains, England will win' and 'If it rains, England will not win' are contradictories. I prefer to say that 'If it rains England will win' and 'If it rains, England will not win' are contradictories for the following reason. Though Smith, who asserts the former, and Jones, who asserts the latter, are not committed to anything at all if it does not rain, if either are committed to anything, each is committed to something which is the contradictory of what the other is committed to, for 'England will win' is certainly the contradictory of 'England will not win'.

I think Gower is over-impressed by the analogy between 'If it rains, England will win' and 'All John's children are asleep'. If I say 'All John's children are asleep', and John has no children, it may well be that what I assert is neither true nor false, just as, if I assert that England will win if it rains, and it does not rain, what I assert is neither true nor false. But, if I assert that all John's children are asleep I am, even though John has no children, certainly intending to commit myself to all his children being asleep, and so, if he has no children, am committed to something which is neither true nor false. On the other hand, if I assert that England will win if it rains I am not intending to commit myself to anything, if it does not rain, and there are no circumstances under which what I am committed to, if I am committed to anything (i.e. to the proposition that England will win) is neither true nor false. This disanalogy should not surprise us, for, though it is quite improper for us to say that all John's children are asleep if we do not know whether John has any children or not, or if we believe that John has no children, it is not at all improper for us to assert



MR. GOWER ON CONDITIONALS I05

that England will win, if it rains, although we do not know whether it will rain or not, or actually believe that it will not rain. Someone asserting 'All John's children are asleep' and someone replying 'No, they are not' are, if John has no children, sharing a mistake, but someone asserting 'If it rains, England will win' and someone replying 'No, they will not', are not sharing a mistake. This may provide us with a reason for thinking that, although 'All John's children are asleep' and 'Not all John's children are asleep' are not contradictories, 'If it rains, England will win' and 'If it rains, England will not win' are contradictories. For although, if John has no children, what Smith intends to commit himself to, that all John's children are asleep, and what Jones intends to commit himself to, that not all John's children are asleep, may both be neither true nor false, the same is not true of anyone saying 'If it rains, England will win', and 'If it rains, England will not win', even if it does not rain.

If one makes the assertion that England will win if it rains, and it does not rain, one has not so much committed oneself to something which is neither true nor false as avoided getting unconditionally committed to something (that England will win), which certainly must be either true or false. Hence Jones, who says 'If it rains, England will win' contradicts Smith, who says 'If it rains, England will not win' in that (a) what each is committed to, if he is committed to anything, is the contradictory of what the other is committed to, if he is committed to anything, and (b) that the circumstances (its raining) which cause Jones to be committed are the very same as the circumstances which cause Smith to be committed. Hence, if either is committed both are, and committed to contradictory things.

UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM



mr. gower on conditionals

Documents