Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Truth table of Conditional

Conditional is a compound statement in the form 'if p then q' is denoted p -> q. What is truth conditional? Notice the phrase 'If you give Rp. 20.000, - to me, I bought concert tickets going for you. "Symbolic representation of the sentence is as follows:

p: You gave me Rp. 20.000, -
q: I bought concert tickets for you.
p -> q: If you gave me Rp 20,000, -, I'll buy you a concert ticket.

Conditional can be viewed as a promise. Assuming you really gave me 20 thousand, then I will have two options, whether buying or not. When I bought (q = B) then the statement is true. But if I do not buy (q = S) then the sentence is false. This situation can be described as follows.

p q p->q
B B B
B S S
S B ?
S S ?

Then what if you do not give me 20 thousand? p = S? Of course if I would give you a ticket or not, p -> q is not wrong. Because the promise is only fulfilled if p is true. Since p -> q is false, then if p either directly make the truth value of p -> q is true. Table complete conditional is as follows.

p q p->q
B B B
B S S
S B B
S S B

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