[FOM] Why inclusive disjunction?

Andreas Blass ablass at umich.edu
Thu Jan 11 09:01:13 EST 2007


Richard Heck wrote:

> Inclusive or certainly is far simpler to work with. It's  
> associative, for one thing,

Exclusive or is also associative.  But iterating it produces a parity  
connective; that is "p exclusive-or q exclusive-or r exclusive-or ...  
exclusive-or z" is true just when the number of true constituents  
among p, q, r, ... z is odd.  Might the more pleasant result of  
iterating inclusive or have something to do with our preference for  
it?  Or maybe the monotonicity of inclusive or makes it more pleasant?

Andreas Blass


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