Privacy, Secrecy, Fact, and Falsehood

Deploying distinctions between ignorance of a proposition and ignorance that it is true, and between knowledge of a proposition and knowledge that it is true, I distinguish between propositional privacy and factive privacy. While the latter is limited to personal facts, the former encompasses personal falsehoods as well. I argue that propositional privacy is both broader and deeper than factive privacy, and accordingly that conceiving of the nature of privacy in terms of propositional privacy has important advantages over conceiving of it solely in terms of factive privacy. I draw similar lessons with regard to secrecy.