The material conditional, also known as the material implication or truth functional conditional, expresses a property of certain
conditionals in
logic. In
propositional logic, it expresses a binary truth function ⊃ from truth-values to truth-values. In
predicate logic, it can be viewed as a subset relation between the extension of (possibly complex) predicates. In symbols, a material conditional is written as one of the following: The material conditional is false when X is true and Y is false - otherwise, it is true. (Here, X and Y are variables ranging over
formulæ of a
formal theory.) We call X the antecedent, and Y the consequent. The material conditional is also commonly referred to as material implication with the understanding that the antecedent (X) materially implies the consequent (Y).
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