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<rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 11, 2004 at 05:26:14PM -0800, John
> E Clifford wrote:
> > and (we often say) real conditionals are
> subjunctive. But this
> > seems to be a genuinely truth functional use.
>
>
> Uhh, if "My hair is blue, unless my eyes are
> bad" doesn't imply that
> the second clause is subjunctive (the speaker
> doesn't actually think
> his eyes are bad), you and I speak very
> different dialects of
> English.
>
> -Robin
Well, it may imply that (better implicate that,
since it is a pragmatic kind of compulsion), but
that doesn't make it subjunctive. It still works
as a truth functional claim (as your tables
show): presumably as an emphatic form of "My hair
is blue." (I'm not sure it need function in that
way, but am considering the case where it does.)
This differs from the subjunctive cases, where we
want to say that a claim is true — or false --
even though the truth functional conditions do
not apply (false conditionals with false
antecedents, for example). A disjunction with a
(implicitly) false disjunct is
non-problematically true, provided that the other
disjunct is.