[Bups-dis] Question on the Conditionals

[Reza Hadisi]

Hi everyone,
This isn't exactly a discussion; just a question here:

Does anyone know what's wrong here?

(if (P AND Q), then R), logically entails ( (if P, then R) OR (if Q, then R))


But there are dozens of examples which make trouble for this inference. E.g.:

P: Diego is Jim's father
Q: Mary is Jim's mother
R: Diego and Mary are Jim's parents

or may be a better one:

P: I call her by her first name
Q: I call her by her last name
R: She loves it!

The translation of the sentence at the left side does not match with the equivalent sentence at the right side:

For the first example, one might say it's a possible world conditional. (well then try it with P: Plato is a fool. Q: Quine is a fool. R: Russell is a fool.... still I think what is meant in the left side is different from what is meant in the right side). But let's see the second example which works better:

At the left side, the sentence tries to say that "she loves it if I call her by her full name", while the second side says "she loves it either I call her by her first name or her last name". 

This seems to be a famous problem. I saw the problem just recently; but there was nothing on the solutions. Many of similar examples seemed to me to be indicative conditionals and yet they got this translational problem. Any idea on what should I look in? :-)

Best,
Reza


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