Real Conditionals [Paperback]

William G. Lycan offers a fresh approach to the long-running debate among philosophers and logicians about the best way to analyze and understand conditional sentences. Lycan attends not just to the semantics of such sentences, but equally to their syntax, making use of insights from linguistic theory.Real Conditionalsis the definitive presentation of Lycan's view, written in his characteristically lively style.

Preface, Acknowledgements
1. The Syntax of Conditional Sentences
2. Truth Conditions: The Event Theory
3. Truth Conditions: Reality and Modus Ponens
4. In Defense of Truth-Value
5. A Beautiful But False Theory of 'Even If'
6. An Unbeautiful But Less Easily Refuatable Theory of 'Even If'
7. The 'Indicative'/'Subjunctive' Distinction
8. The Riverboat Puzzle
Appendix: 'Nonconditional Conditionals' (with Michael L. Geis)
Revisionary Postscript on Nonconditional Conditionals
Bibliography, Index

After reading [Lycan's] work, it's hard to take seriously work that does not share [his] methodology...Real Conditionalsis 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. --ThePhilosophical Review

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