Skip to main content

Advanced Topics in Logic

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Concise Guide to Formal Methods

Part of the book series: Undergraduate Topics in Computer Science ((UTICS))

  • 2527 Accesses

Abstract

We consider some advanced topics in logic including fuzzy logic, temporal logic, intuitionist logic, undefined values in logic, logic and AI and theorem provers. Fuzzy logic is an extension of classical logic that acts as a mathematical model for vagueness. Temporal logic is concerned with the expression of properties that have time dependencies. Brouwer and others developed intuitionist logic as the logical foundation for intuitionism, which was a controversial theory of the foundations of mathematics based on a rejection of the law of the excluded middle and an insistence on constructive existence. We discuss several approaches that have been applied to dealing with undefined values that arise with partial functions including the logic of partial functions; Dijkstra’s approach with his cand and cor operators; and Parnas’s approach which preserves a classical two-valued logic.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 69.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    It is best to avoid undefinedness by taking care with the definitions of terms and expressions.

  2. 2.

    The above expression would evaluate to true under Jones three-valued logic of partial functions.

  3. 3.

    The above expression evaluates to true for Parnas logic (a two-valued logic).

  4. 4.

    It seems strange to assign the value false to the primitive predicate calculus expression y = 1/0.

  5. 5.

    The approach avoids the undefined logical value (⊥) and preserves the two-valued logic.

  6. 6.

    First-order logic allows quantification over objects but not functions or relations. Higher-order logics allow quantification of functions and relations.

  7. 7.

    For example, the statement ∃x such that x = √4 states that there is an x such that x is the square root of 4, and the constructive existence yields that the answer is that x = 2 or x = −2 i.e. constructive existence provides more the truth of the statement of existence, and an actual object satisfying the existence criteria is explicitly produced.

  8. 8.

    John McCarthy received the Turing Award in 1971 for his contributions to Artificial Intelligence. He also developed the programming language LISP.

  9. 9.

    Perhaps a good analogy might be that a mathematical proof is like a program written in a high-level language such as C, whereas a formal proof in logic is like a program written in assembly language.

  10. 10.

    Russell is said to have remarked that he was delighted to see that the Principia Mathematica could be done by machine and that if he and Whitehead had known this in advance that they would not have wasted 10 years doing this work by hand in the early twentieth century.

References

  1. E.M. Clarke, E.A. Emerson, Design and synthesis of synchronization skeletons using branching time temporal logic, in Logic of Programs: Work-shop, Yorktown Heights, NY, May 1981, volume 131 of LNCS (Springer, Berlin, 1981)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Stanford Enclyopedia of Philosophy, Temporal logic. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-temporal/

  3. A. Heyting, Intuitionist Logic. An Introduction (North-Holland Publishing, 1966)

    Google Scholar 

  4. P. Martin Löf, Intuitionist Type Theory. Notes by Giovanni Savin of lectures given in Padua, June, 1980. Bibliopolis. Napoli (1984)

    Google Scholar 

  5. D.L. Parnas, Predicate calculus for software engineering. IEEE Trans. Softw. Eng. 19(9) (1993)

    Google Scholar 

  6. C. Jones, Systematic Software Development using VDM (Prentice Hall International, 1986)

    Google Scholar 

  7. J. McCarthy, Programs with common sense, in Proceedings of the Teddington Conference on the Mechanization of Thought Processes (1959)

    Google Scholar 

  8. A. Newell, H. Simon, The logic theory machine. IRE Trans. Inf. Theory 2, 61–79 (1956)

    Google Scholar 

  9. B. Russell, A.N. Whitehead, Principia Mathematica (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1910)

    Google Scholar 

  10. R. Boyer, J.S. Moore, A Computational Logic. The Boyer Moore Theorem Prover (Academic Press, New York, 1979)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gerard O’Regan .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

O’Regan, G. (2017). Advanced Topics in Logic. In: Concise Guide to Formal Methods. Undergraduate Topics in Computer Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64021-1_7

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64021-1_7

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-64020-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-64021-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics