[FOM] Why inclusive disjunction?

[Lucius Schoenbaum]

It might have something to do with the early discovery of the Boolean  
structure and the analogy with set union and intersection.  Boole in  
an investigation of the laws of thought already has addition for  
union, concatenative multiplication for intersection, and gives a  
distributive law x(y+z)=xy+xz.

Lucius Schoenbaum

On Jan 9, 2007, at 23:38, John Baldwin wrote:

>
> I am preparing to teach a course in `proof'.
>
> Can anyone provide a principled reason for why logicians choose to
>   interpret "or" as inclusive disjunction?
>
> I understand that in the interpretations of statutes, the exclusive or
> is the default.  So attorney's have made a different choice of
> `formalization'.
>
>
>
>
> John T. Baldwin
> Director, Office of Mathematics Education
> Department of Mathematics, Statistics,
> and Computer Science  M/C 249
> jbaldwin at uic.edu
> 312-413-2149
> Room 327 Science and Engineering Offices (SEO)
> 851 S. Morgan
> Chicago, IL 60607
>
> Assistant to the director
> Jan Nekola: 312-413-3750
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