Hi everyone,
I'm very confused by how to interpret "or"/disjunction in conditional logic.
For the sentence "If A or B don't occur, then C occurs",
Does this imply:
1) /(A or B) -> C
2) (/A or /B) -> C
Let's say A occurs and B doesn't.
For Interpretation 1, the sufficient assumption would not be fulfilled; "A or B" is fulfilled since B is fulfilled. Since the conditional only works if "A or B" isn't true (the "/"), the conditional fails.
For Interpretation 2, the sufficient assumption WOULD be fulfilled; "/B" is fulfilled; since only one needs to be fulfilled, the condition works and we can infer C.
I'm not sure if that explanation made sense to anyone else. If it did, can someone explain which interpretation is accurate and WHY?
(I come from a Computer Science background and so this is the way it makes sense to me.)
1 comments
I interpret as 1, because the "do not occur" applies to the entire [A or B].
Consider:
If you don't go to a doctor or take medicine you'll die.
If you do not [doctor or medicine] you'll die.
The not applies to the entire or pairing, not each individual component of the or.
So you can also translate this as "if you neither go to a doctor nor take medicine, you'll die." Not dying requires doing at least one of those two things.