CSC425525ExtraNotesonChapter2LogicandFirst.docVIP

CSC 425/525: Extra Notes on Chapter 2 Logic and First Order Predicate Calculus For those of you who have had MAT 385, this should be review. If you feel you already understand the topic, you may skip sections I-IV below. Introduction Logic is the study of reasoning. It is applied to prove things, whether mathematical, philosophical, or scientific. It is the basis for a branch of computer programming used in artificial intelligence. It can be applied to perform software verification. Basically, logic is a systematic method for clearly expressing and demonstrating truths. We focus on symbolic logic, that is, a logic where the statements expressed are symbols that represent concepts. We start with propositional logic where our statements are either true or false. This is a traditional two-valued logic. There are other logics, such as fuzzy logic (which deals with statements that contain a degree of truthfulness, evaluated as a real number between 0 and 1) which will be covered later in the semester. In logic, we may write a statement in English, in propositional calculus, in predicate calculus, or through some other means. For these notes, we will limit ourselves to these three “languages”. A statement must be well-formed. We refer to such statements as well-formed formulas (wff). There are rules for forming wffs which will be introduced later. In English, the following are legal logical statements: It is sunny out. You are a computer science student. The number twelve is larger than the number 10. A tree is a living entity. In English, the following are not logical statements: How did you do on the exam? (this does not evaluate to true or false) He went to the movie. (we do not know who “He” is so we cannot prove whether this is true or false) God created the Universe. (we cannot prove this) Read the next chapter. (this is a command, not a statement) Statements can include connectives. In logic, our connectives are AND, OR, NOT, Implication (writ