In
logic, a logical connective (also called a logical operator, sentential connective, or sentential operator) is a
logical constant. Connectives can be used to connect logical formulas. For instance in the
syntax of
propositional logic, the
binary connective can be used to join the two
atomic formulas and , rendering the complex formula .
Common connectives include
negation,
disjunction,
conjunction,
implication, and
equivalence. In standard systems of
classical logic, these connectives are
interpreted as
truth functions, though they receive a variety of alternative interpretations in
nonclassical logics. Their classical interpretations are similar to the meanings of natural language expressions such as
English "not", "or", "and", and "if", but not identical. Discrepancies between natural language connectives and those of classical logic have motivated nonclassical approaches to natural language meaning as well as approaches which pair a classical
compositional semantics with a robust
pragmatics.
In
formal languages, truth functions are represented by unambiguous symbols. This allows logical statements to not be understood in an ambiguous way. These symbols are called logical connectives, logical operators, propositional operators, or, in
classical logic, truth-functional connectives. For the rules which allow new well-formed formulas to be constructed by joining other well-formed formulas using truth-functional connectives, see
well-formed formula.
Logical connectives can be used to link zero or more statements, so one can speak about n-ary logical connectives. The
boolean constants True and False can be thought of as zero-ary operators. Negation is a 1-ary connective, and so on.
Commonly used logical connectives include the following ones.[2]
Negation (not): , , (prefix) in which is the most modern and widely used, and is used by many people too;
Conjunction (and): , , (prefix) in which is the most modern and widely used;
Disjunction (or): , (prefix) in which is the most modern and widely used;
Implication (if...then): , , , (prefix) in which is the most modern and widely used, and is used by many people too;
Equivalence (if and only if): , , , , (prefix) in which is the most modern and widely used, and may be also a good choice compared to denoting implication just like to .
For example, the meaning of the statements it is raining (denoted by ) and I am indoors (denoted by ) is transformed, when the two are combined with logical connectives:
It is not raining ();
It is raining and I am indoors ();
It is raining or I am indoors ();
If it is raining, then I am indoors ();
If I am indoors, then it is raining ();
I am indoors if and only if it is raining ().
It is also common to consider the always true formula and the always false formula to be connective (in which case they are
nullary).
Negation: the symbol appeared in
Heyting in 1930[3][4] (compare to
Frege's symbol ⫟ in his
Begriffsschrift[5]); the symbol appeared in
Russell in 1908;[6] an alternative notation is to add a horizontal line on top of the formula, as in ; another alternative notation is to use a
prime symbol as in .
Conjunction: the symbol appeared in Heyting in 1930[3] (compare to
Peano's use of the set-theoretic notation of
intersection[7]); the symbol appeared at least in
Schönfinkel in 1924;[8] the symbol comes from
Boole's interpretation of logic as an
elementary algebra.
Disjunction: the symbol appeared in
Russell in 1908[6] (compare to
Peano's use of the set-theoretic notation of
union); the symbol is also used, in spite of the ambiguity coming from the fact that the of ordinary
elementary algebra is an
exclusive or when interpreted logically in a two-element
ring; punctually in the history a together with a dot in the lower right corner has been used by
Peirce.[9]
Implication: the symbol appeared in
Hilbert in 1918;[10]: 76 was used by Russell in 1908[6] (compare to Peano's Ɔ the inverted C); appeared in
Bourbaki in 1954.[11]
Equivalence: the symbol in
Frege in 1879;[12] in Becker in 1933 (not the first time and for this see the following);[13] appeared in
Bourbaki in 1954;[14] other symbols appeared punctually in the history, such as in
Gentzen,[15] in Schönfinkel[8] or in Chazal, [16]
True: the symbol comes from
Boole's interpretation of logic as an
elementary algebra over the
two-element Boolean algebra; other notations include (abbreviation for the Latin word "verum") to be found in Peano in 1889.
False: the symbol comes also from Boole's interpretation of logic as a ring; other notations include (rotated ) to be found in Peano in 1889.
Some authors used letters for connectives: for conjunction (German's "und" for "and") and for disjunction (German's "oder" for "or") in early works by Hilbert (1904);[17] for negation, for conjunction, for alternative denial, for disjunction, for implication, for biconditional in
Łukasiewicz in 1929.
Redundancy
Such a logical connective as
converse implication "" is actually the same as
material conditional with swapped arguments; thus, the symbol for converse implication is redundant. In some logical calculi (notably, in
classical logic), certain essentially different compound statements are
logically equivalent. A less
trivial example of a redundancy is the classical equivalence between and . Therefore, a classical-based logical system does not need the conditional operator "" if "" (not) and "" (or) are already in use, or may use the "" only as a
syntactic sugar for a compound having one negation and one disjunction.
There are sixteen
Boolean functions associating the input
truth values and with four-digit
binary outputs.[18] These correspond to possible choices of binary logical connectives for
classical logic. Different implementations of classical logic can choose different
functionally complete subsets of connectives.
One approach is to choose a minimal set, and define other connectives by some logical form, as in the example with the material conditional above.
The following are the
minimal functionally complete sets of operators in classical logic whose arities do not exceed 2:
One element
, .
Two elements
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .
Three elements
, , , , , .
Another approach is to use with equal rights connectives of a certain convenient and functionally complete, but not minimal set. This approach requires more propositional
axioms, and each equivalence between logical forms must be either an
axiom or provable as a theorem.
The situation, however, is more complicated in
intuitionistic logic. Of its five connectives, {∧, ∨, →, ¬, ⊥}, only negation "¬" can be reduced to other connectives (see
False (logic) § False, negation and contradiction for more). Neither conjunction, disjunction, nor material conditional has an equivalent form constructed from the other four logical connectives.
Natural language
The standard logical connectives of classical logic have rough equivalents in the grammars of natural languages. In
English, as in many languages, such expressions are typically
grammatical conjunctions. However, they can also take the form of
complementizers,
verbsuffixes, and
particles. The
denotations of natural language connectives is a major topic of research in
formal semantics, a field that studies the logical structure of natural languages.
The meanings of natural language connectives are not precisely identical to their nearest equivalents in classical logic. In particular, disjunction can receive an
exclusive interpretation in many languages. Some researchers have taken this fact as evidence that natural language
semantics is
nonclassical. However, others maintain classical semantics by positing
pragmatic accounts of exclusivity which create the illusion of nonclassicality. In such accounts, exclusivity is typically treated as a
scalar implicature. Related puzzles involving disjunction include
free choice inferences,
Hurford's Constraint, and the contribution of disjunction in
alternative questions.
Some logical connectives possess properties that may be expressed in the theorems containing the connective. Some of those properties that a logical connective may have are:
Within an expression containing two or more of the same associative connectives in a row, the order of the operations does not matter as long as the sequence of the operands is not changed.
To read the truth-value assignments for the operation from top to bottom on its
truth table is the same as taking the complement of reading the table of the same or another connective from bottom to top. Without resorting to truth tables it may be formulated as g̃(¬a1, ..., ¬an) = ¬g(a1, ..., an). E.g., ¬.
Truth-preserving
The compound all those arguments are tautologies is a tautology itself. E.g., ∨, ∧, ⊤, →, ↔, ⊂ (see
validity).
Falsehood-preserving
The compound all those argument are
contradictions is a contradiction itself. E.g., ∨, ∧, , ⊥, ⊄, ⊅ (see
validity).
For classical and intuitionistic logic, the "=" symbol means that corresponding implications "...→..." and "...←..." for logical compounds can be both proved as theorems, and the "≤" symbol means that "...→..." for logical compounds is a consequence of corresponding "...→..." connectives for propositional variables. Some
many-valued logics may have incompatible definitions of equivalence and order (entailment).
Both conjunction and disjunction are associative, commutative and idempotent in classical logic, most varieties of many-valued logic and intuitionistic logic. The same is true about distributivity of conjunction over disjunction and disjunction over conjunction, as well as for the absorption law.
In classical logic and some varieties of many-valued logic, conjunction and disjunction are dual, and negation is self-dual, the latter is also self-dual in intuitionistic logic.
This section needs expansion. You can help by
adding to it. (March 2012)
Order of precedence
As a way of reducing the number of necessary parentheses, one may introduce
precedence rules: ¬ has higher precedence than ∧, ∧ higher than ∨, and ∨ higher than →. So for example, is short for .
Here is a table that shows a commonly used precedence of logical operators.[19]
Operator
Precedence
1
2
3
4
5
However, not all compilers use the same order; for instance, an ordering in which disjunction is lower precedence than implication or bi-implication has also been used.[20] Sometimes precedence between conjunction and disjunction is unspecified requiring to provide it explicitly in given formula with parentheses. The order of precedence determines which connective is the "main connective" when interpreting a non-atomic formula.
Computer science
This section needs expansion. You can help by
adding to it. (March 2012)
But not every usage of a logical connective in
computer programming has a Boolean semantic. For example,
lazy evaluation is sometimes implemented for P ∧ Q and P ∨ Q, so these connectives are not commutative if either or both of the expressions P, Q have
side effects. Also, a
conditional, which in some sense corresponds to the
material conditional connective, is essentially non-Boolean because for if (P) then Q;, the consequent Q is not executed if the
antecedent P is false (although a compound as a whole is successful ≈ "true" in such case). This is closer to intuitionist and
constructivist views on the material conditional— rather than to classical logic's views.
Table and Hasse diagram
The 16 logical connectives can be
partially ordered to produce the following
Hasse diagram.
The partial order is defined by declaring that if and only if whenever holds then so does
^Chao, C. (2023). 数理逻辑:形式化方法的应用 [Mathematical Logic: Applications of the Formalization Method] (in Chinese). Beijing: Preprint. pp. 15–28.
^
abHeyting, A. (1930). "Die formalen Regeln der intuitionistischen Logik". Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Physikalisch-mathematische Klasse (in German): 42–56.
^Frege, G. (1879). Begriffsschrift, eine der arithmetischen nachgebildete Formelsprache des reinen Denkens. Halle a/S.: Verlag von Louis Nebert. p. 10.
^
abcRussell (1908) Mathematical logic as based on the theory of types (American Journal of Mathematics 30, p222–262, also in From Frege to Gödel edited by van Heijenoort).
^
abSchönfinkel (1924) Über die Bausteine der mathematischen Logik, translated as On the building blocks of mathematical logic in From Frege to Gödel edited by van Heijenoort.
^Peirce (1867) On an improvement in Boole's calculus of logic.
^Hilbert, D. (1918). Bernays, P. (ed.). Prinzipien der Mathematik. Lecture notes at Universität Göttingen, Winter Semester, 1917-1918; Reprinted as Hilbert, D. (2013). "Prinzipien der Mathematik". In Ewald, W.; Sieg, W. (eds.). David Hilbert's Lectures on the Foundations of Arithmetic and Logic 1917–1933. Heidelberg, New York, Dordrecht and London: Springer. pp. 59–221.
^Bourbaki, N. (1954). Théorie des ensembles. Paris: Hermann & Cie, Éditeurs. p. 14.
^Frege, G. (1879). Begriffsschrift, eine der arithmetischen nachgebildete Formelsprache des reinen Denkens (in German). Halle a/S.: Verlag von Louis Nebert. p. 15.
^Becker, A. (1933). Die Aristotelische Theorie der Möglichkeitsschlösse: Eine logisch-philologische Untersuchung der Kapitel 13-22 von Aristoteles' Analytica priora I (in German). Berlin: Junker und Dünnhaupt Verlag. p. 4.
^Bourbaki, N. (1954). Théorie des ensembles (in French). Paris: Hermann & Cie, Éditeurs. p. 32.
^Gentzen (1934) Untersuchungen über das logische Schließen.
^Hilbert, D. (1905) [1904]. "Über die Grundlagen der Logik und der Arithmetik". In Krazer, K. (ed.). Verhandlungen des Dritten Internationalen Mathematiker Kongresses in Heidelberg vom 8. bis 13. August 1904. pp. 174–185.
^Bocheński (1959), A Précis of Mathematical Logic, passim.
Bocheński, Józef Maria (1959), A Précis of Mathematical Logic, translated from the French and German editions by Otto Bird, D. Reidel, Dordrecht, South Holland.
Chao, C. (2023). 数理逻辑:形式化方法的应用 [Mathematical Logic: Applications of the Formalization Method] (in Chinese). Beijing: Preprint. pp. 15–28.