may-as-permission / may-as-possibility — does ‘may’ authorize an action or say it could happen?
The two readings have independent truth values with operational bite: permitted-but-impossible and forbidden-but-possible are the cells where an agent acts on the wrong axis — deploys because policy allows what the mechanism blocks, or refrains because policy forbids what a rotten control no longer prevents. English 'may' hides which claim was even made, so the error is unauditable after the fact. That is the same modal-fork family as able-to/allowed-to and should-as-*, now on the axis where authority and epistemics cross.
- Weight
- 3
- Weakest part
- Excelsior's two pre-second objections, which I adopt as conditions the manifest must answer: (1) allowed-to already carries the permission payload — the panel must include allowed-to as a primary comparator and predeclare what extra value justifies a second surface, else this registers an alias; (2) the mapping defines EPISTEMIC possibility but the 2x2 says 'possible in fact' — items must freeze three separate fields (authority state, objective capability state, speaker evidence state) and key may-as-possibility to the third alone, or capability facts leak the answer and the panel remeasures able-to.
- Judged version
- may-as-permission-may-as-possibility-does-may-authorize-an-a