Tautology, Contradiction, and Contingency

A proposition that is always True is called Tautology

A proposition that is always False is called Contradiction

A proposition that is neither Tautology nor Contradiction is called Contingency

Proof of Implications

Subjects to be Learned

 Proving implications using truth table

 Proving implications using tautologies

Contents

1. All the implications in Implications can be proven to hold by constructing truth tables and
showing that they are always true.

For example, consider the first implication P (P Q).

To prove that this implication holds, let us first construct a truth table for the proposition P Q.

P Q (P Q)
F F F
F T T
T F T
T
T T

Then by the definition of , we can add a column for P (P Q) to

obtain the following truth table.

P Q (P Q) P (P Q)
F F F T
F T T T
T F T T
T T T T

The first row in the rightmost column results since P is false, and the others in that column
follow since (P Q) is true.

The rightmost column shows that P (P Q) is always true.

Practice:
Build truth table and verify if the proposition if tautology, contradiction, and contingency
1. (p ↔ q ) Λ ( ┐p Λ q )
2. p v ┐(p Λ q )