First-order logic—also known as predicate logic, quantificational logic, and first-order predicate calculus—is a collection of formal systems used in mathematics, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science. First-order logic uses quantified variables over non-logical objects and allows the use of sentences that contain variables, so that rather than propositions such as Socrates is a man one can have expressions in the form "there exists x such that x is Socrates and x is a man" and there exists is a quantifier while x is a variable. This distinguishes it from propositional logic, which does not use quantifiers or relations; in this sense, propositional logic is the foundation of first-order logic.
Propositional calculus is a branch of logic. It is also called propositional logic, statement logic, sentential calculus, sentential logic, or sometimes zeroth-order logic. It deals with propositions and argument flow. Compound propositions are formed by connecting propositions by logical connectives. The propositions without logical connectives are called atomic propositions.
In mathematics, a monotonic function is a function between ordered sets that preserves or reverses the given order. This concept first arose in calculus, and was later generalized to the more abstract setting of order theory.
Cox's theorem, named after the physicist Richard Threlkeld Cox, is a derivation of the laws of probability theory from a certain set of postulates. This derivation justifies the so-called "logical" interpretation of probability, as the laws of probability derived by Cox's theorem are applicable to any proposition. Logical probability is a type of Bayesian probability. Other forms of Bayesianism, such as the subjective interpretation, are given other justifications.
Relevance logic, also called relevant logic, is a kind of non-classical logic requiring the antecedent and consequent of implications to be relevantly related. They may be viewed as a family of substructural or modal logics.
The theory of belief functions, also referred to as evidence theory or Dempster–Shafer theory (DST), is a general framework for reasoning with uncertainty, with understood connections to other frameworks such as probability, possibility and imprecise probability theories. First introduced by Arthur P. Dempster in the context of statistical inference, the theory was later developed by Glenn Shafer into a general framework for modeling epistemic uncertainty—a mathematical theory of evidence. The theory allows one to combine evidence from different sources and arrive at a degree of belief that takes into account all the available evidence.
In mathematics, a Heyting algebra is a bounded lattice equipped with a binary operation a → b of implication such that ≤ b is equivalent to c ≤. From a logical standpoint, A → B is by this definition the weakest proposition for which modus ponens, the inference rule A → B, A ⊢ B, is sound. Like Boolean algebras, Heyting algebras form a variety axiomatizable with finitely many equations. Heyting algebras were introduced by Arend Heyting (1930) to formalize intuitionistic logic.
A non-monotonic logic is a formal logic whose consequence relation is not monotonic. In other words, non-monotonic logics are devised to capture and represent defeasible inferences, i.e., a kind of inference in which reasoners draw tentative conclusions, enabling reasoners to retract their conclusion(s) based on further evidence. Most studied formal logics have a monotonic consequence relation, meaning that adding a formula to a theory never produces a reduction of its set of consequences. Intuitively, monotonicity indicates that learning a new piece of knowledge cannot reduce the set of what is known. A monotonic logic cannot handle various reasoning tasks such as reasoning by default, abductive reasoning, some important approaches to reasoning about knowledge, and similarly, belief revision.
The material conditional is a logical connective that is often symbolized by a forward arrow "→". The material conditional is used to form statements of the form p → q which is read as "if p then q". Unlike the English construction "if … then …", the material conditional statement p → q does not conventionally specify a causal relationship between p and q; "p is the cause and q is the consequence from it" is not a generally valid interpretation of p → q. It merely means "if p is true then q is also true" such that the statement p → q is false only when p is true and q is false. In a bivalent truth table of p → q, if p is false then p → q is true regardless of whether q is true or false since (1) p → q is always true as long q is true and (2) p → q is true when both p and q are false. This truth table is useful to prove some mathematical theorems.
Default logic is a non-monotonic logic proposed by Raymond Reiter to formalize reasoning with default assumptions.
Kripke semantics is a formal semantics for non-classical logic systems created in the late 1950s and early 1960s by Saul Kripke and André Joyal. It was first conceived for modal logics, and later adapted to intuitionistic logic and other non-classical systems. The development of Kripke semantics was a breakthrough in the theory of non-classical logics, because the model theory of such logics was almost non-existent before Kripke.
Belief revision is the process of changing beliefs to take into account a new piece of information. The logical formalization of belief revision is researched in philosophy, in databases, and in artificial intelligence for the design of rational agents.
In economics, an ordinal utility function is a function representing the preferences of an agent on an ordinal scale. Ordinal utility theory claims that it is only meaningful to ask which option is better than the other, but it is meaningless to ask how much better it is or how good it is. All of the theory of consumer decision-making under conditions of certainty can be, and typically is, expressed in terms of ordinal utility.
The closed-world assumption (CWA), in a formal system of logic used for knowledge representation, is the presumption that a statement that is true is also known to be true. Therefore, conversely, what is not currently known to be true, is false. The same name also refers to a logical formalization of this assumption by Raymond Reiter. The opposite of the closed-world assumption is the open-world assumption (OWA), stating that lack of knowledge does not imply falsity. Decisions on CWA vs. OWA determine the understanding of the actual semantics of a conceptual expression with the same notations of concepts. A successful formalization of natural language semantics usually cannot avoid an explicit revelation of whether the implicit logical backgrounds are based on CWA or OWA.
Circumscription is a non-monotonic logic created by John McCarthy to formalize the common sense assumption that things are as expected unless otherwise specified. Circumscription was later used by McCarthy in an attempt to solve the frame problem. To implement circumscription in its initial formulation, McCarthy augmented first-order logic to allow the minimization of the extension of some predicates, where the extension of a predicate is the set of tuples of values the predicate is true on. This minimization is similar to the closed-world assumption that what is not known to be true is false.
The autoepistemic logic is a formal logic for the representation and reasoning of knowledge about knowledge. While propositional logic can only express facts, autoepistemic logic can express knowledge and lack of knowledge about facts.
Logic is the formal science of using reason and is considered a branch of both philosophy and mathematics. Logic investigates and classifies the structure of statements and arguments, both through the study of formal systems of inference and the study of arguments in natural language. The scope of logic can therefore be very large, ranging from core topics such as the study of fallacies and paradoxes, to specialized analyses of reasoning such as probability, correct reasoning, and arguments involving causality. One of the aims of logic is to identify the correct and incorrect inferences. Logicians study the criteria for the evaluation of arguments.
The dominance-based rough set approach (DRSA) is an extension of rough set theory for multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA), introduced by Greco, Matarazzo and Słowiński. The main change compared to the classical rough sets is the substitution for the indiscernibility relation by a dominance relation, which permits one to deal with inconsistencies typical to consideration of criteria and preference-ordered decision classes.
An interpretation is an assignment of meaning to the symbols of a formal language. Many formal languages used in mathematics, logic, and theoretical computer science are defined in solely syntactic terms, and as such do not have any meaning until they are given some interpretation. The general study of interpretations of formal languages is called formal semantics.
Logical consequence is a fundamental concept in logic, which describes the relationship between statements that hold true when one statement logically follows from one or more statements. A valid logical argument is one in which the conclusion is entailed by the premises, because the conclusion is the consequence of the premises. The philosophical analysis of logical consequence involves the questions: In what sense does a conclusion follow from its premises? and What does it mean for a conclusion to be a consequence of premises? All of philosophical logic is meant to provide accounts of the nature of logical consequence and the nature of logical truth.
