Can 'but' be used as a boolean operator?

Answer 1

If you think of it in a case like this:

"Bob eats chocolate on even days of the month but not Wednesdays."

Then it would be expressed as "and not" or a NAND operator:

(day is even) and not (day is Wednesday)

On the other hand, if you look at a sentence like this one:

"Jane only likes cats, but only if they're black"

Then it's used as an AND operator:

(animal is cat) and (animal is black)

So as an operator in itself "but" is somewhat undefined. Depending on it's usage though, it can be translated to another operator.