Conditioned disjunction as a primitive connective for the erweiterter Aussagenkalkül

Abstract

It has been shown that the conditioned disjunction function [X, Y, Z] with the same truth-table as (X & Y) ∨ (Z & ) together with the logical constants t and f, form a complete set of independent connectives for the 2-valued propositional calculus and that these connectives are self-dual. This has since been generalised to the theorem which states that the conditioned disjunction function [Y, X1, X2, …, Xm, Y] with the same truth-table as (X1 & J1(Y)) ∨ (X2 & J2(Y)) ∨ … ∨ (Xm & Jm(Y)) together with the logical constants 1, 2, …, m form a complete set of independent connectives for the m-valued propositional calculus and that these connectives are self-dual. It has been conjectured by Church that conditioned disjunction together with the universal and existential quantifiers form a complete set of independent connectives for the 2-valued erweiterter Aussagenkalkül. The object of the present paper is to prove a theorem for the m-valued erweiterter Aussagenkalkül which reduces, in the case m = 2, to the conjecture of Church. In the m-valued propositional calculus if the propositional variable X occurs as a free variable in the formula then (∃X) and (X) are read “there exists X such that ” and “for all X, ”, respectively. If for a given assignment of truth-values to the remaining free propositional variables occurring in , takes the truth-value f(x), where x is the truth-value of X, then (∃X) and (X) take the truth-values min (f(1), f(2), …, f(m)), max(f(1), f(2), …, f(m)), respectively. We shall prove:Theorem. The conditioned disjunction function, together with the universal and existential quantifiers, form a complete set of independent connectives for the m-valued erweiterter Aussagenkalkül.