Vol. 41 No. 2 (2021)
Thematic section

Secrecy, Content, and Quantification

Thomas Macaulay Ferguson
Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, University of Amsterdam / Arché Research Centre, University of St. Andrews

Published 2021-11-01

Keywords

  • Weak Kleene Logic,
  • Strict-Tolerant Logic,
  • Immune Logic,
  • Quantifiers
  • Lógica Kleene débil,
  • Lógica estricta-tolerante,
  • Lógica inmune,
  • Cuantificadores

Abstract

While participating in a symposium on Dave Ripley’s forthcoming book Uncut, I had proposed that employing a strict-tolerant interpretation of the weak Kleene matrices provided a content-theoretical conception of the bounds of conversational norms that enjoyed advantages over Ripley’s use of the strong Kleene matrices. During discussion, I used the case of sentences that are taken to be out-of-bounds for being secrets as an example of a case in which the setting of conversational bounds in practice diverged from the account championed by Ripley. In this paper, I consider an objection that my treatment of quantifiers was mistaken insofar as the confidentiality of a sentence ϕ(t) may not lift to the sentence ∃xϕ(x) and draw from this objection that neither the strong nor the weak Kleene interpretation of quantifiers suffices, but that a novel interpretation may do so.

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