Fatalism and the Logic of Unconditionals: Fatalism and the Logic of Unconditionals

In this paper, I consider a variant of the ancient Idle Argument involving so-called "unconditionals" with interrogative antecedents. This new Idle Argument provides an ideal setting for probing the logic of these close relatives of if-conditionals, which has been comparatively underexplored. In the course of refuting the argument, I argue that contrary to received wisdom, many unconditionals do not entail their main clauses, yet modus ponens is still unrestrictedly valid for this class of expressions. I make these lessons precise in a formal system drawing on recent work in inquisitive semantics. My larger aim is to challenge standard truth preservation accounts of logic and deductive argumentation.