On Thursday, June 29, 2006 12:43 PM the ever-sharp Bill Briggs noted At 12:33 PM -0600 6/29/06, Grant Hogarth, self-professed pedant, wrote: GH>>To build still further on Eric's excellent discourse: GH>>There also exists the possibility of a conditional dependency of action. GH>> E.g. "If your book wins a Pulitzer, [then] you GH>> [will/can/must/shall/may/ought to/...] celebrate..." GH>> GH>>- If A, then B (explicit consequence, implied (but not required) GH>>order) GH>>- If A and B (explicit connection, both elements required) GH>>- If A, and then B (explicit consequence, conditions must occur GH>>in fixed order) GH>>- If A, B (explict set construction with tacit connection, GH>>but no required sequence) GH>> GH>>In the first three of these, the time separation element is implied GH>>as a requirement;
web> Sorry, but that's not so. I will grant you that it's not mathematically *complete* <g> web> My example in a previous message has no time element and web> satisfies the first just fine thank you. It's not necessary that these things are sequences of instructions, they can be existing conditions, which is how the constructs arise in logic and in programming any kind of logic based system. Further, the first instance is a complete notion. The second and third are not and require a consequence to complete the statement. The last is totally unclear to me. Is it "if A and B" or "if A or B" or "if A given B" or something else? It is not possible to ascertain from what you've written. - web
