• Korean Journal of Logic
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.85-100
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• 2011

Recently Byeong Deok Lee has denied the validity of the so-called uncontested principle, which says that the indicative conditional implies the material conditional. I show that his denial means that modus ponens is not valid and that the truth-conditions of indicative conditionals are weaker than that of material conditionals. It seems that what made him hold this view is related to some misunderstanding of indicative conditionals.

• Korean Journal of Logic
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.273-294
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• 2012

In my previous article "An Inferentialist Account of Indicative Conditionals" and "An Inferentialist Account of Indicative Conditionals and Hasuk Song's Objections", I argued that the so-called Uncontested Principle is not uncontestable. According to the Uncontested Principle, an indicative conditional '$A{\rightarrow}C$' logically implies a material conditional '$A{\supset}C$'. In his recent paper "On the Recent Controversies surrounding the Uncontested Principle" Wonbae Choi presents three objections to my claim. First, my denial of the Uncontested Principle implies rejecting modus ponens. Second, my denial of the Uncontested Principle is tantamount to taking the truth-conditions of an indicative conditional as weaker than those of a material conditional, which are usually taken to be the weakest among conditionals. Third, my view that we can warrantedly assert '$A{\rightarrow}C$' even when 'A ${\therefore}$ C' is inductively justified is based on a misunderstanding of the way in which indicative conditionals are justified. In this paper I argue that Choi's objections are all based on misunderstandings of my view. First, I do not deny the validity of modus ponens (as a form of deductive reasoning). Second, the fact that the inductive warrantability of 'A ${\therefore}$ C' does not imply the truth of '$A{\supset}C$' does not show that the truth-conditions of an indicative conditional is weaker than those of a material conditional. Third, Choi's claim that a contingent conditional '$A{\rightarrow}C$' is true only when 'C' can be deductively derived from 'A' in conjunction with a hidden premiss is not well grounded, nor does it fit the facts.