DISCRETE STRUCTURES

Lesson 2

Percival A. Fernandez
Tautologies
 In logic, a tautology is a formula that is true in every possible interpretation.
 Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein first applied the term to redundancies
of propositional logic in 1921. (It had been used earlier to refer to rhetorical
tautologies, and continues to be used in that alternative sense.)
 A formula is satisfiable if it is true under at least one interpretation, and thus
a tautology is a formula whose negation is unsatisfiable.
 Unsatisfiable statements, both through negation and affirmation, are known
formally as contradictions.
Tautologies
 A formula that is neither a tautology nor a contradiction is said to
be logically contingent. 
 Tautologies are a key concept in propositional logic, where a tautology is
defined as a propositional formula that is true under any possible Boolean
valuation of its propositional variables.
 A key property of tautologies in propositional logic is that an effective
method exists for testing whether a given formula is always satisfied (or,
equivalently, whether its negation is unsatisfiable).
Tautologies
 Propositional logic begins with propositional variables, atomic units that
represent concrete propositions.
 A formula consists of propositional variables connected by logical
connectives, built up in such a way that the truth of the overall formula can
be deduced from the truth or falsity of each variable.
 A valuation is a function that assigns each propositional variable either T
(for truth) or F (for falsity).
Tautologies
 So, for example, using the propositional variables A and B, the binary
connectives  \/ and /\ representing disjunction and conjunction respectively,
and the unary connective ¬ representing negation, the following formula can
be obtained .
 A valuation here must assign to each of A and B either T or F. But no matter
how this assignment is made, the overall formula will come out true. For if
the first conjunction   is not satisfied by a particular valuation, then
one of A and B is assigned F, which will cause the corresponding later
disjunct to be T.
Definition and Examples
 A formula of propositional logic is a tautology if the formula itself is always true regardless of
which valuation is used for the propositional variables.
There are infinitely many tautologies. Examples include:
Definition and Examples
Example − Prove [(A → B) ∧ A] → B is a tautology
The truth table is as follows −
A B A→ B (A → B) ∧ A [(A → B) ∧ A] → B
True True True True True
True False False False True
False True True False True
False False True False True