Inquiry into the meaning of logical terms in natural language (‘and’, ‘or’, ‘not’, ‘if ’) has generally proceeded along two dimensions. On the one hand, semantic theories aim to predict native speaker intuitions about the natural language sentences involving those logical terms. On the other hand, logical theories explore the formal properties of the translations of those terms into formal languages. Sometimes these two lines of inquiry appear to be in tension: for instance, our best logical investigation into conditional connectives may show that there is no conditional operator that has all the properties native speaker intuitions suggest ‘if ’ has. Indicative conditionals have famously been the source of one such tension, ever since the triviality proofs of both Lewis (1976) and Gibbard (1981) established conclusions which are prima facie in tension with ordinary judgements about natural language indicative conditionals. In a recent series of papers, Branden Fitelson (2013, 2015, 2016) has strengthened both triviality results, revealing a common culprit: a logical schema known as IMPORT-EXPORT. Fitelson’s results focus the tension between the logical results and ordinary judgements, since IMPORT-EXPORT seems to be supported by intuitions about natural language. In this paper, we argue that the intuitions which have been taken to support IMPORT-EXPORT are really evidence for a closely related but subtly different principle. We show that the two principles are independent by showing how, given a standard assumption about the conditional operator in the formal language in which IMPORTEXPORT is stated, many existing theories of indicative conditionals validate one but not the other. Moreover, we argue that once we clearly distinguish these principles, we can use propositional anaphora to show that IMPORT-EXPORT is in fact not valid for natural language indicative conditionals (given this assumption about the formal conditional operator). This gives us a principled and independently motivated way of rejecting a crucial premiss in many triviality results, while still making sense of the speaker intuitions which appeared to motivate that premiss. We suggest that this strategy has broad application and teaches an important lesson: in theorizing about the logic of natural language, we must pay careful attention to the translation between formal languages, in which logical results are typically proved, and natural languages, which are the subject matter of semantic theory.

中文翻译：

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琐碎结果与逻辑语言与自然语言的关系

对自然语言中逻辑术语（“和”、“或”、“非”、“如果”）的含义的探究通常是沿着两个维度进行的。一方面，语义理论旨在预测母语者对涉及这些逻辑术语的自然语言句子的直觉。另一方面，逻辑理论探索将这些术语翻译成正式语言的形式属性。有时，这两条探究线似乎很紧张：例如，我们对条件连接词的最佳逻辑研究可能表明，没有条件运算符具有母语人士的直觉暗示“如果”具有的所有属性。指示性条件句是著名的这种张力的来源，自从 Lewis (1976) 和 Gibbard (1981) 的琐碎性证明都建立了与自然语言指示性条件句的普通判断存在张力的初步结论之后。在最近的一系列论文中，Branden Fitelson (2013, 2015, 2016) 加强了这两个琐碎的结果，揭示了一个共同的罪魁祸首：称为 IMPORT-EXPORT 的逻辑模式。Fitelson 的结果集中在逻辑结果和普通判断之间的张力，因为 IMPORT-EXPORT 似乎得到了关于自然语言的直觉的支持。在本文中，我们认为支持 IMPORT-EXPORT 的直觉确实是一个密切相关但略有不同的原则的证据。我们通过展示如何证明这两个原则是独立的，在陈述 IMPORTEXPORT 的形式语言中，给定关于条件运算符的标准假设，许多指示性条件的现有理论验证了一个而不是另一个。此外，我们认为一旦我们清楚地区分了这些原则，我们就可以使用命题回指来表明 IMPORT-EXPORT 实际上对自然语言指示条件无效（考虑到关于形式条件运算符的这种假设）。这为我们提供了一种有原则和独立动机的方式，可以在许多琐碎的结果中拒绝一个关键前提，同时仍然理解似乎激发该前提的说话者直觉。我们建议这种策略具有广泛的应用，并教给我们一个重要的教训：在对自然语言的逻辑进行理论化时，