When is “if” true?
It is day. I am talking. So far, both clauses agree.
What does the word “if” add?
εἰ ἡμέρα ἔστιν,
ἐγὼ διαλέγομαι.
Sextus Empiricus reports a dispute.
Read all four accounts.
Hold the sentence. Change the facts.
Try silence while it is still day. Then try night.
The present case
Both clauses say the same thing. Changing day changes both; opposite truth values are unavailable.
The picture shows simultaneous facts. It does not show one clause causing the other.
Which cases do you admit?
Finite compatibility: a counterexample remains
These are your model’s assumptions. An admitted case need not be happening now.
| Case | Admit | Present |
|---|
A selected table cannot establish what is truly possible. What the model assumes.
Your table excludes the current facts. Keep the conflict as a draft, select an admitted present case, or admit this one.
Philo: the current pair
Read the criterionFinite compatibility: the admitted cases
No antecedent-true case is admitted. This is a vacuous pass of the finite test; it does not establish ancient connection.
Read the connection accountPhilo’s reported truth test is computed directly. “Finite compatibility” is our modern analogue of the connection test: search the admitted cases for a true antecedent with a false consequent. Diodorus’s criterion and the fourth account receive no computed verdict. Why these limits matter.
A route through the disagreement
- Start with day and talking. Philo’s test is true. The finite table still admits day with silence, so its compatibility test fails.
- Pin this experiment. Exclude only “Day, silent”. The present facts stay the same, but the table now passes. What justified the exclusion? Write the assumption below.
- Make day with silence current. The conflict shows that your table ruled out the facts you now selected. Admit the current case to repair it.
- Choose the repeated day sentence. Both clauses share one truth value. Read the fourth account: Sextus reports a challenge even to that apparently easy example.
Same facts, different commitment?
Pin an experiment, then change either the present facts or the admitted cases.
The disagreement, in Greek.
Back to the experimentSix readings preserve all four reported accounts and Sextus’s challenge to choosing between them. This report is not a surviving treatise by Philo or Diodorus.
Close English
Teaching Latin · a new translation
A teaching translation, with abridgments named below; not a historical Latin witness.
The complete printed page and textual apparatus are retained. The page service’s leaf number is different from its printed page number.
Edition, transcription and attribution
Keep the commitment you made.
Save the present facts, admitted cases, pinned comparison and your explanation. Results are recomputed when an editable record is reopened.
Your explanation stays on this device and is preserved without grading. Save before closing the tab. A shared notebook link includes this text.
Your portable reading
The illustrated reading embeds both complete source pages, all readings, fonts and licenses. Open it offline or print to PDF.
The table is an assumption.
Four combinations, a bounded result
Each clause has one of two truth values. Two independently assigned clauses give four simultaneous pairs. Philo’s reported criterion excludes only true / false. It does not require a cause, prediction or connection of subject matter.
The finite compatibility test asks whether any admitted pair has a true antecedent and false consequent. The table exhausts its four combinations; it does not establish which combinations the world permits. Choosing a smaller table adds assumptions. In particular, manually excluding “Day, silent” cannot prove that daylight entails talking.
A repeated statement must have the same truth value in both places. That leaves day / day and not-day / not-day. It does not settle what every ancient account calls a sound conditional.
The disagreement stays open
In II.110–114 Sextus reports Philo, Diodorus, proponents of connection, and proponents of potential containment, then challenges how their dispute could be judged. He does not name the connection proponents in this passage. The workshop does not turn his report into an endorsement.
Diodorus’s criterion involves past and present possibility. Observing a few moments, or checking a user-selected finite table, cannot certify it. Potential containment is not defined by the program’s case table either. Neither account receives a computed verdict.
The word “conflicts” in the connection account is represented here by failure of co-admission in the supplied table. That is a modern compatibility analogue. It does not reconstruct ancient relevance, necessity, or the meaning of every conditional in ordinary language.