Paradoxes of material implication in the context of "Reasoning"

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⭐ Core Definition: Paradoxes of material implication

The paradoxes of material implication are a group of classically true formulae involving material conditionals whose translations into natural language are intuitively false when the conditional is translated with English words such as "implies" or "if ... then ...". They are sometimes phrased as arguments, since they are easily turned into arguments with modus ponens: if it is true that "if then " (), then from that together with , one may argue for . Among them are the following:

A material conditional formula is true unless is true and is false; it is synonymous with "either P is false, or Q is true, or both". This gives rise to vacuous truths such as, "if 2+2=5, then this Wikipedia article is accurate", which is true regardless of the contents of this article, because the antecedent is false. Given that such problematic consequences follow from an extremely popular and widely accepted model of reasoning, namely the material implication in classical logic, they are called paradoxes. They demonstrate a mismatch between classical logic and robust intuitions about meaning and reasoning.

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Paradoxes of material implication in the context of Material conditional

The material conditional (also known as material implication) is a binary operation commonly used in logic. When the conditional symbol is interpreted as material implication, a formula is true unless is true and is false.

Material implication is used in all the basic systems of classical logic as well as some nonclassical logics. It is assumed as a model of correct conditional reasoning within mathematics and serves as the basis for commands in many programming languages. However, many logics replace material implication with other operators such as the strict conditional and the variably strict conditional. Due to the paradoxes of material implication and related problems, material implication is not generally considered a viable analysis of conditional sentences in natural language.

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