Bochvar three-valued logic has recently gained the attention of philosophers as a good candidate for being the logic of topics. This idea was originally suggested by Beall, who interpreted the third non-classical value 1/2 as being off-topic. Despite the conceptual scenario connected with this intuition, its logico-philosophical refinement is still at an embryonic stage, and some authors have cast doubt on it (e.g. Francez). In this paper, we develop a general framework, based on Bochvar logic, to successfully model the notion of topicality. We show that the notion of topic arising from our structures overcomes the limitations of Beall’s proposal, thus obtaining new evidence for the claim that Bochvar logic really is the logic of topics.
Topicality via Bochvar logic
Carrara, Massimiliano;Pra Baldi, Michele
2026
Abstract
Bochvar three-valued logic has recently gained the attention of philosophers as a good candidate for being the logic of topics. This idea was originally suggested by Beall, who interpreted the third non-classical value 1/2 as being off-topic. Despite the conceptual scenario connected with this intuition, its logico-philosophical refinement is still at an embryonic stage, and some authors have cast doubt on it (e.g. Francez). In this paper, we develop a general framework, based on Bochvar logic, to successfully model the notion of topicality. We show that the notion of topic arising from our structures overcomes the limitations of Beall’s proposal, thus obtaining new evidence for the claim that Bochvar logic really is the logic of topics.
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