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Mathematics Start‑class Low‑priority

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Philosophy: Logic Start‑class Mid‑importance

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Second hatnote

The 2012 discussion about this matter did not reveal a single instance where material implication (rule of inference) is called “material conditional” or by some other name which redirects here, or may be mistyped in a way which gets a reader to this article. At least, I do not see there any concrete direction. The edit was anything else than an attempt to circumvent the due process. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 07:32, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Confusing

At present the lead section does not define "material conditional". Furthermore, it assumes some understanding of formal logic, but never actually positions "material conditional" within the study of logic. More detail, more basic explanation, and a definition of the concept would be appreciated. Cnilep (talk) 01:22, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

I've reworked the lead to try and make it clearer and more informative. I omitted the distinction between material implication and logical implication from the lead because it wasn't clearly explained and the introduction of that distinction in the lead seemed excessive and confusing. I've tried to describe the meaning of the operator in a clear manner and I've also pointed out a common confusion of beginners to formal logic in relation to that operator. I've also added two citations and extended the segment that listed logical equivalents. Your feedback would be most welcome. AnotherPseudonym (talk) 14:59, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

p→q is logically equivalent to …

“Reworking” undone. I will revert on sight any edits which injects a knowledge like

(whatever a college student can derive from laws of Boolean logic), because a propositional calculus is not necessarily classical/Boolean. There is no such thing as the propositional calculus. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 07:04, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

I've reverted your revert. There may be so such thing as the propositional calculus, but removing Boolean propositional calculus form the lead would be wrong. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 03:36, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

I take your point but I think that is rather heavy handed. You could just qualify what you identified as too general. Yes a college student can derive the equivalences but the point is to provide a concise description of the operator in the lead. AnotherPseudonym (talk) 07:45, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

I have added the necessary qualification. Regarding the original lead, it was a mess. Amongst other things the original lead had redundancies, it employed terms without first defining them or linking to a definition, sometimes the term "compound" was used and other times "statment" was used, the relatively minor matter of material implication vs. logical entailment was too long, used an awful example and just confused what preceded it. In the lead it would have been sufficient to just say something like: "The material conditional is to be distinguished from logical entailment (which is usually symbolosed using ." The distinction can then be detailed in the body of the article. Also the failure to even mention propositional calculus -- which is the context in which someone is most likely to look up the meaning of the operator -- was an unacceptable omission. By the time someone reaches the study of paraconsistent logical systems they will likely have no need to look up what a material conditional is on Misplaced Pages. A novice is most likely to look up this entry in wikipedia and they will most likely have encountered the operator in the context of classical/Boolean propositional calculus. AnotherPseudonym (talk) 08:06, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

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