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The corresponding logical symbols are "", "", [6] and , [10] and sometimes "iff".These are usually treated as equivalent. However, some texts of mathematical logic (particularly those on first-order logic, rather than propositional logic) make a distinction between these, in which the first, ↔, is used as a symbol in logic formulas, while ⇔ is used in reasoning about those logic formulas ...
Venn diagram of (true part in red) In logic and mathematics, the logical biconditional, also known as material biconditional or equivalence or bidirectional implication or biimplication or bientailment, is the logical connective used to conjoin two statements and to form the statement "if and only if" (often abbreviated as "iff " [1]), where is known as the antecedent, and the consequent.
Example 2 For the whole numbers greater than two, being odd is necessary to being prime, since two is the only whole number that is both even and prime. Example 3 Consider thunder, the sound caused by lightning. One says that thunder is necessary for lightning, since lightning never occurs without thunder. Whenever there is lightning, there is ...
Since the statement and the converse are both true, it is called a biconditional, and can be expressed as "A polygon is a quadrilateral if, and only if, it has four sides." (The phrase if and only if is sometimes abbreviated as iff.) That is, having four sides is both necessary to be a quadrilateral, and alone sufficient to deem it a quadrilateral.
An argument is valid if and only if its corresponding conditional is a logical truth. It follows that an argument is valid if and only if the negation of its corresponding conditional is a contradiction. Therefore, the construction of a corresponding conditional provides a useful technique for determining the validity of an argument.
For example, if "snow is white" is true if and only if snow is white, then it is trivially the case that "snow is white" is true if and only if snow is white and 2+2=4, therefore under truth-conditional semantics "snow is white" means both that snow is white and that 2+2=4.
is true only if both A and B are false, or both A and B are true. Whether a symbol means a material biconditional or a logical equivalence , depends on the author’s style. x + 5 = y + 2 ⇔ x + 3 = y {\displaystyle x+5=y+2\Leftrightarrow x+3=y}
For example, from the statements "if I'm breathing, then I'm alive" and "if I'm alive, then I'm breathing", it can be inferred that "I'm breathing if and only if I'm alive". Biconditional introduction is the converse of biconditional elimination. The rule can be stated formally as: