W.H. Newton-Smith, LOGIC, Routledge, London, 1985, p.27: "Probably the majority of philosophers would maintain that the conditional is rarely used in Einglish in a truth-functional way. That is, that in most cases of even the indicative conditional, the truth of the conditional requires that some connection obtain between the antecedent and the consequent. That being so we cannot determine the truth-value of the conditional just on the basis of knowing the truth-values of the antecedent and the consequent. Notwithstanding this we will treat the conditional as truth-functional. Those who think that the conditional is not truth-functional may be inclined to be DISMISSIVE OF OUR ENTIRE ENTERPRISE at this point."
The ENTIRE ENTERPRISE is formal logic, the one that is taught nowadays. In a book called "Deductive Science" I am going to show that scientific logic and formal logic do not even overlap, although the latter has often been referred to as an abstract representation of the former. Tentative ideas (some of them need revision) are given here:
http://www.wbabin.net/philos/valev9.pdf
Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com