material conditional

English

Noun

material conditional (plural material conditionals)

1. (logic) A type of conditional statement used in formal logic and defined as true whenever its antecedent is false or its consequent is true, and false when its antecedent is true and its consequent is false.

   Synonyms: conditional, if-then statement, horseshoe conditional, material implication, Philonian conditional

   Antonym: strict implication

   Hypernym: logical connective

   'A ⊃ B' represents a material conditional.

Usage notes

• Sometimes argued to be equivalent to the indicative conditional in natural language.

See also

• entailment

Further reading

• material conditional on Wikipedia.Wikipedia