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Concept

Soundness

The property of a proof system that everything derivable in it is true. It is what makes a derivation evidence at all, and it is usually the easy half to establish, since it needs only that each rule preserves truth.

Named by 5 essays across one field — each of them below, with the objects they name alongside it.

A tableau for ((p → q) ∧ (q → r)) → (p → r). A branching tree of formulas, each branch ending in a contradiction or in a description of a counterexample.

The tree that closes

To prove a formula, assume it false and take it apart. Every branch ends in a contradiction, or one of them describes exactly how it could have been false — and either way the tree is the answer, drawn.

logic · Proof systems A resolution refutation of four clauses on three variables. A derivation tree: the given clauses at the top, each later clause obtained by cancelling one variable between two clauses above it, ending in the empty clause.

A proof with one rule

Two clauses that disagree about exactly one variable can be combined into a third that forgets it; repeat, and if the clauses cannot all be true the empty clause eventually appears — a complete proof system with a single move.

logic · Resolution A model whose worlds are sets of sentences. Worlds labelled by which of a fixed finite set of formulas they accept, with an arrow wherever every boxed formula accepted by one has its inside accepted by the other.

Worlds built out of sentences

A Kripke model needs worlds, and nothing so far has said where worlds come from. They can be made of the syntax: a world is a set of formulas it commits to, one world sees another when the boxed commitments line up, and in the model that results every formula is true exactly where it was assumed.

logic · Modal logic 7 steps and 3 withdrawn assumptions. A natural-deduction derivation of (p → q) → (¬q → ¬p). Each horizontal bar is one inference, named on its right; the bracketed formulas are assumptions, and each is withdrawn at the step that names it.

The assumption a proof pays back

A tableau assumes the opposite once and takes it apart. Natural deduction assumes things freely, uses them, and then withdraws them — and the withdrawal is what turns a derivation of a consequence into a proof of an implication.

logic · Proof systems A lemma, and the proof that never mentions one. Two derivations of ((p → q) ∧ (q → r)) → (p → r) compared: the cut-free one uses 8 nodes and only subformulas of the goal, and the one through a lemma uses 21 and mentions a formula the goal does not contain.

A lemma, and the proof that never mentions one

Proving something by first proving a lemma is what makes mathematics readable, and it is exactly what makes a proof system impossible to search — because the lemma can be any formula at all. Gentzen proved the step can always be removed, and the removal is not free.

logic · Proof systems

Named alongside it

The objects these essays reach for when they reach for this one.

CompletenessProof systemDecision procedureTableauBranchingLiteralNatural deductionRefutationSatisfiabilityConsistencyCut eliminationDischarge

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