Alternates for "if"

---- I was going to title this, "Grandy/Warner -- Stanford Encycl. -- on "if p, q" and the "probability of q, given p" but I double thought.

In any case, there's this point about alternates to 'if'

If you read the wiki for probability, while they do have "and" and "or", when it comes to conditional probability, they avoid 'if' and write rather -- I refer to the table summarising formulae:

"q given p"

P(q/p) = the ratio of P(p ∩ q):Pp

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Does Grice allow for other forms other than 'if'? I think so. Must confess I never was too interested. But it may do to revise them. Indeed, there are zillion alternate forms for each of the seven formal devices.

But let us stick with 'if':

Grice seems to list four alternatives to 'if p, q' which -- since he is considering the non-detachability of the implicatum (qua conversational) -- are said to be, in his precise words, "indentical in meaning".

His example:

"If Smith is in London, he is attending the meeting."

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The four alternates listed on p. 59 are:

FIRST ALTERNATE:

"Smith is NOT in London, or he is attending the meeting"

SECOND ALTERNATE:

"It is NOT the case that Smith is BOTH in London and NOT attending the meeting."

THIRD ALTERNATE:

"NOT BOTH of the following propositions is true: (i) Smith is in London and (ii) Smith is not attending the meeting"

------ This sounds like metalogical or metalinguistic to me.

FOURTH ALTERNATIVE:

"I deny the conjunction of the statements that Smith is in Londor and that Smith is not attending the meeting"

----- this sounds like too egocentric.

--

In any case, Grice concludes, "the [implicature: to the effect that the apodosis follows from the protasis] seems persitent".

You need a Grice catalyst.

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He even suggests:

FIFTH ALTERNATE:

"One of the [combos] of truth-possibilities for
the statements (i) that Smith is in London and
(ii) that Smith is attending the meeting is
realised, other than the one which consists of
the first staement's being true and the second false."

---- While metalinguistic and metalogic -- and perhaps a breach to my beloved Ramsey's redundance theory of truth -- I find that Griceanly precise.

--

Grice observes:

"After one has sorted this out, one still detects the [implicature]."

---- Seems like a generalised bug.

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Grice's caveat:

"BUT -- if all these attempts [five of them] to detach
the [implicature of inferrability] (particularly the
last [Number 5]) ARE failures, how does [Strawson]
suppose that one can LEARN from the truth-table,
that "p ) q" has a meaning which DIVERGES from that of
["if p, q"]?"

In fact, he continues the question above with a more incissive one: "And, is it not ALREADY beginning to LOOK as if the [Inferrability] condition is something which in general is conversationally [emphasis Grice's. JLS] implicated by saying that [if p, q]?" (WoW:59).

I can imagine his regrets: "And to think he was my pupil!" (*)

----- (*: "The book" -- or words to that effect, "is dedicated to Grice, my tutor in logic from whom I have never ceased to learn about it" -- a never-ending task, it seems).