Suppose And Tell

What does 'if' mean? Timothy Williamson presents a controversial new approach to understanding conditional thinking, which is central to human cognitive life. He argues that in using 'if' we rely on psychological heuristics, fast and frugal methods which can lead us to trust faulty data and prematurely reject simple theories.

What does 'if' mean? It is one of the most commonly used words in the English language, in itself a sign to the importance of conditional thinking to human cognitive life. We make conditional statements, ask conditional questions, and issue conditional orders. We need to think and talk conditionally for many purposes, from everyday decision-making to mathematical proof. Yet the meaning of conditionals has been debated for thousands of years. Suppose and Tell brings together ideas from philosophy, linguistics, and psychology to present a controversial new approach to understanding conditionals. It argues that in using 'if' we rely on psychological heuristics, methods which are fast and frugal and mostly, but not always, reliable. As a result philosophers and linguists have been led astray in theorizing about conditionals through trusting faulty data generated by such methods and prematurely rejecting simple theories on the basis of merely apparent counterexamples. This book shows how one such simple theory of conditionals can explain the data, and draws wider implications for the nature of meaning and its non-transparency to native speakers, vagueness in thought and language, and the need for semantics to attend to the unreliable heuristics underlying our judgments.

Prologue Books presents: A Western thriller from Max Brand. In The Man from Mustang, Silvertip hunts a man whose face he's never seen . . . And whose name he doesn't know! "The explosion of the shot echoed through the saloon. The moment before, a gun had glinted in the night through an open window. Now Buck lay on the floor, fighting for his life, trying to raise himself on one hand trying to breathe. He reached up and caught Silvertip's hand. He tried to speak, but only red bubbles of blood burst on his lips."

THE AUTHOR?S STORIES ARE BASED ON REAL LIFE EVENTS, THEY ARE CREATIVE, THE MESSAGE IS STRONG, VIVID, AND PROFOUND TO SAY THE LEAST. THE STORIES ARE ARGUEMENTIVE, HOWEVER, THEY OPEN UP THE REALISTIC DOORS IN YOUR MIND TO ALLOW YOUR IMAGINATION TO RUN WILD, FREE, AND THEN BACK TO REALITY?FEARLESS, HUMBLE, AND READY?TO BECOME?YOU!