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In mathematical logic, a tautology (from Ancient Greek: ταυτολογία) is a formula that is true regardless of the interpretation of its component terms, with only the logical constants having a fixed meaning. For example, a formula that states, "the ball is green or the ball is not green," is always true, regardless of what a ball is ...
In propositional logic, tautology is either of two commonly used rules of replacement. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] The rules are used to eliminate redundancy in disjunctions and conjunctions when they occur in logical proofs .
Tautological consequence can also be defined as ∧ ∧ ... ∧ → is a substitution instance of a tautology, with the same effect. [2]It follows from the definition that if a proposition p is a contradiction then p tautologically implies every proposition, because there is no truth valuation that causes p to be true and so the definition of tautological implication is trivially satisfied.
Circular reasoning (Latin: circulus in probando, "circle in proving"; [1] also known as circular logic) is a logical fallacy in which the reasoner begins with what they are trying to end with. [2]
However, the term tautology is also commonly used to refer to what could more specifically be called truth-functional tautologies. Whereas a tautology or logical truth is true solely because of the logical terms it contains in general (e.g. " every ", " some ", and "is"), a truth-functional tautology is true because of the logical terms it ...
Such a proof is again a refutation by contradiction. A typical example is the proof of the proposition "there is no smallest positive rational number": assume there is a smallest positive rational number q and derive a contradiction by observing that q / 2 is even smaller than q and still positive.
A graphical representation of a partially built propositional tableau. In proof theory, the semantic tableau [1] (/ t æ ˈ b l oʊ, ˈ t æ b l oʊ /; plural: tableaux), also called an analytic tableau, [2] truth tree, [1] or simply tree, [2] is a decision procedure for sentential and related logics, and a proof procedure for formulae of first-order logic. [1]
The resolution rule in propositional logic is a single valid inference rule that produces a new clause implied by two clauses containing complementary literals. A literal is a propositional variable or the negation of a propositional variable.