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Definition. Any Statement That Can Be Put in The Form "If, Then ", Where and
Definition. Any Statement That Can Be Put in The Form "If, Then ", Where and
Definition. Any Statement That Can Be Put in The Form "If, Then ", Where and
Definition. Any statement that can be put in the form “If 𝒑, then 𝒒”, where 𝑝 and 𝑞
are basic statements, is called a conditional statement and is written symbolically as
𝒑 → 𝒒. The component 𝑝 is called the premise (or antecedent) and the component 𝑞 is
called the conclusion (or consequent). A conditional statement is also called an implication
and can be rewritten in the form “𝒑 implies 𝒒.” Note how the arrow follows the logical
direction of the implication expressed by the statement.
This is a conditional statement of the form 𝑝 → 𝑞 with premise 𝑝: “The number is divisible
by 2” and conclusion 𝑞: “The number is even.”
The above statement could also be written in other logically equivalent ways, such as:
Words like so, hence, therefore, and then are straightforward conditional connectives that
are immediately followed by the conclusion of the conditional statement (𝑞). Other
connectives, however, such as provided, whenever, and unless are logically trickier as they
logically reverse the direction of the implication. In these cases, the premise (𝑝) and the
conclusion (𝑞) are swapped within the sentence! The connective unless is particularly
tricky as it also negates the conclusion 𝑞 of the conditional statement (check that the form
“~𝑞 unless 𝑝” is equivalent to the conditional “If 𝑝, then 𝑞”). You must be careful
when you read conditional statements to identify the premise and conclusion
properly. The rule of thumb is to always revert back to the explicit conditional form
“If p , then q .”
Basic Truth Table for the Conditional
To understand the basic truth table for conditional statements, let’s first examine the
truth value of the following simple conditional statement:
Symbolically, we then have 𝑝 → 𝑞, where the premise 𝑝 is basic statement “It’s a rental
boat in Venice” and the conclusion 𝑞 is the basic statement “It’s a gondola.”
All logical possibilities follow the usual four rows of a truth table for a compound
statement with two components 𝑝 and 𝑞.
Row 1
If both 𝒑 and 𝒒 are true (it’s a rental boat in Venice and it’s a gondola) then the
overall statement is clearly true since the implication is not violated.
Row 2
If 𝒑 is true and 𝒒 is false (it’s a rental boat in Venice and it’s NOT a gondola),
then the overall statement is false since the implication has been violated!
Rows 3 & 4
These two rows are a little counter-intuitive. However, in both rows the premise
𝒑 is assumed false (it’s NOT a rental boat in Venice), so the conclusion
becomes automatically irrelevant as far as the logical implication is concerned. In
other words, once the premise is false the implication is no longer applicable. This
suggests that the truth value for the overall statement should be true in these
cases, and not false.
Below is the basic truth table for the conditional statement “If 𝑝, then 𝑞.”
𝒑 𝒒 𝒑→𝒒
T T T
T F F
F T T
F F T
Principles from set theory can be put to use in a powerful way to justify the basic truth
table for conditionals. Consider the conditional statement “If 𝑝, then 𝑞.” Each basic
statement 𝑝 and 𝑞 can be, respectively, written in set notation as 𝑥 ∈ 𝑃 and 𝑥 ∈ 𝑄, where
a subject 𝑥 belongs to set 𝑃 (the predicate of the premise) implies that the same subject
𝑥 belongs to set 𝑄 (the predicate of the conclusion). We exclude here any conditional
that relates different subjects with different predicates (e.g. “If it rains today, it will be wet
tomorrow.”)
As for rows 3 and 4 in the table, we need to assume that 𝑝 is false (so 𝑥 ∉ 𝑃). In that
case, set 𝑃 is empty and it still follows that the statement (𝑥 ∈ 𝑃) → (𝑥 ∈ 𝑄) is true by
the fact that the empty set is a subset of every set, so 𝑃 ⊆ 𝑄. These are, again, true only
in a technical sense.
Equivalent Disjunctive Form of the Conditional
Using basic truth tables, it turns out that the conditional “If 𝑝, then 𝑞” is equivalent to the
disjunction “Not 𝑝 or 𝑞.” [Check this by constructing the truth table of ~𝑝 ∨ 𝑞].
𝒑 → 𝒒 ≡ ~𝒑 ∨ 𝒒
Example 1. The statement “All squares are rectangles” is equivalent to the statement
“It’s not a square or it’s a rectangle.”
Example 2. The statement “I am not scared to hide in the dark room, unless it’s full of
spiders” is equivalent to the statement “I’m scared to hide in the dark room or it’s not
full of spiders.” [Check this.]
Based on this disjunctive form, we can draw the circuit of the conditional statement
𝑝 → 𝑞 as follows:
Note that the light bulb in the circuit above can only be off if both switches ~𝑝 and 𝑞 are
open. This is consistent with the fact that the conditional statement 𝑝 → 𝑞 is only false
when ~𝑝 and 𝑞 are both false (so when 𝑝 is true and 𝑞 is false in row 2).
Negation of the Conditional
Applying De Morgan’s Laws to the disjunctive form of the conditional, we then have the
following:
~(𝒑 → 𝒒) ≡ ~(~𝒑 ∨ 𝒒) ≡ 𝒑 ∧ ~𝒒
Example. The negation of the statement “I will go to the beach unless it rains” is given
by the statement “It rains and I go to the beach.” [Check this.]
There are three important forms related to the conditional 𝑝 → 𝑞. These are given
below.
The Inverse: ~𝒑 → ~𝒒
This form negates both the premise and the conclusion of the conditional. The
implication of the sentence, however, remains unchanged.
The Contrapositive: ~𝒒 → ~𝒑
This form negates both the premise and the conclusion of the conditional; it also
reverses the implication.
Based on the basic truth table for 𝑝 → 𝑞 and its related statements (the converse, the
inverse and the contrapositive), we have the following two important equivalences:
𝒒 → 𝒑 ≡ ~𝒑 → ~𝒒 and 𝒑 → 𝒒 ≡ ~𝒒 → ~𝒑
Example 2. The statement “Every apple is green or red” is equivalent to “If it’s not
green and it’s not red, then it is not an apple.” Can you see why? Here you must write
the original statement as a conditional in the form “If a, then g or r,” where a is the
statement “It’s an apple,” r is the statement “It’s red,” and g is the statement “It’s green,”
and then write the contrapositive as “If (not g and not r), then not a” using De Morgan’s
Law.
Definition. Any statement that has the form “𝒑 if and only if 𝒒”, where 𝑝 and 𝑞 are
basic statements, is called a biconditional statement. It is defined as the conjunction of
a conditional with its converse and is written symbolically as 𝑝 ↔ 𝑞:
(𝑝 → 𝑞) ∧ (𝑞 → 𝑝)
≡ (𝑝 → 𝑞) ∧ (𝑝 ← 𝑞)
≡𝑝↔𝑞
A biconditional statement is also called an equivalence and can be rewritten in the form
“𝒑 is equivalent to 𝒒.” (Symbolically: 𝑝 ≡ 𝑞).
Below is the basic truth table for the biconditional statement “𝑝 if and only if 𝑞.”
𝒑 𝒒 𝒑↔𝒒
T T T
T F F
F T F
F F T
Example 3. Prove that the negation of the biconditional “𝑝 if and only if 𝑞” (~(𝑝 ↔ 𝑞))
is equivalent to the exclusive disjunctive form “Either 𝑝 or 𝑞, but not both” (𝑝 ⊕ 𝑞).
𝑝 ⊕ 𝑞 ≡ (𝑝 ∨ 𝑞) ∧ ~(𝑝 ∧ 𝑞)
≡ (𝑝 ∨ 𝑞) ∧ (~𝑝 ∨ ~𝑞)
Next, we apply De Morgan’s Laws and the disjunctive form of the conditional to
~(𝑝 ↔ 𝑞) as follows:
Now, check that the circuit corresponding to (𝑝 ∨ 𝑞) ∧ (~𝑝 ∨ ~𝑞) is equivalent to the
circuit corresponding to (𝑝 ∧ ~𝑞) ∨ (𝑞 ∧ ~𝑝).