It's not a false premise, because it is not a premise.
ghost of Emeritus or maybe just incorrect
OP stated: If you are counting on seniors to help jump-start the economy [because of COLA]... forget about it.
Correct me if I'm wrong... OP shots the notion down, but anyone that happens to believe the "if" *is* stating an implied premise -- "increased spending will improve the economy", and in support of that conclusion "a COLA increase is an increase in spending".
That reasoning is a little tricky, isn't it?. What follows "if" is not "increased spending will improve the economy", but actually "you are counting on seniors to help jump-start the economy because ...".. And if the sentence after "if" is the premise of an argument, what's the conclusion?. "Forget about it!"?
Tsk, tsk.
Logic (not philosophy). A premise can be converted into an "if" antecedent by the logical rule of implication introduction, or an antecedent into a premise, by the logical rule of modus ponens. So there's a relationship. But they're not the same, because statements (where antecedents are) are not logically like arguments (where premises are). You can attack an argument by showing that its premise is false, but you can't appropriately attack an implication statement by showing that its antecedent is false. This is why I disagreed with the contention that the article under discussion had a false premise.
Wrong tense. You're still doing it.
No, I'm not. I've gone to some pains to show that the issue I raised was not one of grammar. Having studied grammar for so long, I probably have got a pretty good idea of what it is not.
Oh baby, modus ponens!
The sort of grammar I have done is about understanding why people talk the way they do. It has nothing whatever to do with finding those who break rules or somehow improving their behavior. So I don't think your suggested avatar would be good for me. Like many of you, I have my own class prejudices about proper speech, but if I express those prejudices, occasionally, it is unrelated to my background in grammar.
My comment was more general, not only this thread. Sorry if that caused any confusion.
Pray tell, if not Greg Lee, who?
I hear both, and so, as an issue of descriptive grammar, there is nothing further to be said about contemporary English. Both occur. I googled ""have got" versus have" and an article from "grammar girl" came up, http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/have-got-grammar.aspx, which seems to me to be a reasonable discussion. "Have" alone strikes me as being probably more usual in formal speech, probably because it is the older construction.
