On So-Called "Counterfactual Conditionals." by Philip P. HallieReview by: John WatlingThe Journal of Symbolic Logic, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Sep., 1957), p. 321Published by: Association for Symbolic LogicStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2963642 .

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REVIEWS 321

pointing out that the latter defends the statement, "Neither Aristotelian nor Russellian rules give the exact logic of any expression of ordinary language," by saying that ordinary language has no exact logic. J. F. THOMSON

WILLIAM H. DRAY. Professor Ryle on arguments and inference licenses. Mind, n.s. vol. 63 (1954), PP. 384-387.

ROMANE CLARK. Natural inference. Ibid., vol. 65 (1956), pp. 455-472. Both these papers are concerned with Ryle's XVI 300 and are thus barely within

the field of this JOURNAL. Dray argues that it was inconsistent of Ryle to hold that hypothetical sentences both formulate "inference licenses" and make statements, since if they formulate licenses they fail to make statements by Ryle's criteria. He suggests a distinction between two ways in which such a sentence may be used; the speaker may wish to say that it is generally found that if p then q, or he may wish to say that it is correct to conclude that if p then q. Despite the force of 'conclude,' he seems to wish to hold that when a sentence is used in t he latter way, it is not used to make a statement.

Clark is also mainly concerned with the suggestion that hypothetical statements are principles of inference. He ends a long discussion with the conclusion that no clear sense has been shown in which they are, and suggests that no reasons have been advanced for abandoning the traditional view, according to which some arguments, A, therefore B, are enthymemes and have If .4 then B as a suppressed premiss. J. F. THOMSON

PHILIP P. HALLIE. On so-called "counter/actual conditionals." The journal of philosophy, vol. 51 (1954), pp. 273-278.

Hallie argues that since the antecedent and consequent of a subjunctive conditional are not declarative sentences, and since the predicates 'true' and 'false' apply only to declarative sentences, then the antecedent and consequent cannot be either true or false: therefore the problem has been wrongly discussed. He does not suggest how this modifies the problem, nor does he explain how to deal with non-truth-functional conditionals which are not expressed in the subjunctive form: for example one about the future, 'If you go skating on the pond, you will fall in.' JOHN WATLING

A. P. USHENKO. The comdterfactual. Ibid., pp. 369-383. Ushenko's thesis is that a subjunctive conditional refers to a potentiality or disposition.

If this were so, then no subjunctive conditional statement could be made unless a disposition existed, so that the fact that subjunctive conditional statements can be made would prove the existence of dispositions, and so, as Ushenko puts it "testify to the metaphysical significance of semantics." But Ushenko really holds, not that subjunctive conditionals refer to dispositions, but that they assert the existence of dispositions, and he argues from the fact that subjunctive conditionals are sometimes true to the existence of dispositions. This thesis does not testify to the metaphysical significance of semantics. It would do so in conjunction with the thesis that the negation of a subjunctive conditional is itself a subjunctive conditional.

Ushenko considers that he can prove this thesis if he can prove that subjunctive conditionals cannot be translated into "words which are employed in order to report nothing but a fact of actuality." This does not prove that subjunctive conditionals assert dispositions: for it may be that statements asserting dispositions are not the only statements that cannot be translated into descriptions of actual occurrences. Ushenko proceeds to attempt to prove that subjunctive conditionals cannot be trans- lated into truth-functional conditionals. To this end he argues that no indicative statement entails the truth or the falsehood of a subjunctive conditional and that no subjunctive conditional entails any indicative statement. This is not relevant to his contention: to prove that translation is impossible it is not necessary to prove

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