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A term is a variable, an individual constant or an n-place function letter followed by n terms. An atomic formula is a wff consisting of either a sentential letter or an n-place predicate letter followed by n terms. A sentence is a wff in which any variables are bound. An atomic sentence is an atomic formula containing no variables.
Replacement: (i) the formula to be replaced must be within a tautology, i.e. logically equivalent ( connected by ≡ or ↔) to the formula that replaces it, and (ii) unlike substitution its permissible for the replacement to occur only in one place (i.e. for one formula). Example: Use this set of formula schemas/equivalences: ( (a ∨ 0) ≡ a ).
A sentence can be viewed as expressing a proposition, something that must be true or false. The restriction of having no free variables is needed to make sure that sentences can have concrete, fixed truth values: as the free variables of a (general) formula can range over several values, the truth value of such a formula may vary.
In classical logic, all propositions evaluate to exactly one of two truth-values: True or False. [1] [60] For example, "Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit" evaluates to True, [61] while "Wikipedia is a paper encyclopedia" evaluates to False. [62]
Example. In a given propositional logic, a formula can be defined as follows: Every propositional variable is a formula. Given a formula X, the negation ¬X is a formula. Given two formulas X and Y, and a binary connective b (such as the logical conjunction ∧), the expression (X b Y) is a formula. (Note the parentheses.)
An atomic formula or atom is simply a predicate applied to a tuple of terms; that is, an atomic formula is a formula of the form P (t 1,…, t n) for P a predicate, and the t n terms. All other well-formed formulae are obtained by composing atoms with logical connectives and quantifiers. For example, the formula ∀x. P (x) ∧ ∃y. Q (y, f (x ...
An atomic formula is a formula that contains no logical connectives nor quantifiers, or equivalently a formula that has no strict subformulas. The precise form of atomic formulas depends on the formal system under consideration; for propositional logic , for example, the atomic formulas are the propositional variables .
With the advent of algebraic logic, it became apparent that classical propositional calculus admits other semantics.In Boolean-valued semantics (for classical propositional logic), the truth values are the elements of an arbitrary Boolean algebra; "true" corresponds to the maximal element of the algebra, and "false" corresponds to the minimal element.