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arXiv · 2507.17776

Axiomatizing Rumsfeld Ignorance

Jie Fan
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Abstract

In a recent paper, Kit Fine presents some striking results concerning the logical properties of (first-order) ignorance, second-order ignorance and Rumsfeld ignorance. However, Rumsfeld ignorance is definable in terms of ignorance, which makes some existing results and the axiomatization problem trivial. A main reason is that the accessibility relations for the implicit knowledge operator contained in the packaged operators of ignorance and Rumsfeld ignorance are the same. In this work, we assume the two accessibility relations to be different so that one of them is an arbitrary subset of the other. This will avoid the definability issue and retain most of the previous validities. The main results are axiomatizations over various proper bi-frame classes. Finally we apply our framework to analyze Fine's results.

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Jie Fan. 2025-07-22. Axiomatizing Rumsfeld Ignorance. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10992-023-09725-4

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