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statement "Mary reports that John is six feet tall" defers such commitment to Mary. In this way, the statements can be incompatible without creating contradictions in reasoning. For example, the statements "John is six feet tall" and "John is five feet tall" are mutually exclusive (and thus incompatible), but the statements "Mary reports that John is six feet tall" and "Paul reports that John is five feet tall" are not incompatible,

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