8.

Statement Forms and material Equivalence

A. Statement Forms and Statements

Logic deals with statements, and statements vary extensively in the

precision with which they may be made. If someone says, "That is a good
book," that is a statement. It is far less precise, however, than a statement
such as "Albany is the capital of New York." A good book could be good
because it is well printed and bound. It could be good because it is written
in good style. It could tell a good story. It could be good in the opinion of
one person but mediocre in the opinion of another.

A statement is content of a declarative sentence employed in its

typical use; a proposition.

There is an exact parallel between the relation of argument to

argument form, on the one hand, and the relation of statement to statement
form, on the other.

What is Statement Form?

 A statement form is any sequence of symbols containing statement

variables but no statements, such that when statements are
substituted for the statement variables—the same statement being
substituted for the same statement variable throughout—the result is
a statement.

In the propositional calculus, a string of symbols including only statement

variables, and connectives (along with parenthetical punctuation) such that
the substitution of a statement for each of its variables would result in a
well-formed compound statement.

Consider, for example:

p⊃ q If the prosecution improperly charged an accused

then the accused will be acquitted.

Thus “p⊃ a” is a statement form, because when statements are

substituted for the variables p and a, a statement results. The resulting
statement is conditional, so p⊃ a is called a conditional statement form.

Analogously, p v q and p • q are respectively called disjunctive and

conjunctive statement forms, and ~ p is called a negation statement form or
a denial statement form.
 Just as any argument of a certain form is said to be a substitution
instance of that argument form, so any statement of a certain form is said to
be a substitution instance of that statement form. Just as we distinguished
the specific form of a given argument, so we distinguish the specific form
of a given statement as that statement form from which the statement
results by substituting consistently a different simple statement for each
different statement variable.

Specific form
When referring to a given statement, the statement form from which the
statement results when a different simple statement is substituted consistently
for each different statement variable in that form.

Thus p v q is the specific form of the statement, “The blind prisoner

has a red hat or the blind prisoner has a white hat.”

B. Tautologous, Contradictory, and Contingent Statement Forms

Ask yourself:

1. Can you think of a statement that could never be false?

2. How about a statement that could never be true?

It is harder than you think, unless you know how to utilize the truth functional
operators to construct a tautology or a contradiction.

1. TATAULOGY

What is tautology?

 Tautology A statement form all of whose substitution instances

must be true.
 A tautology is a formula which is "always true" --- that is, it is
true for every assignment of truth values to its simple
components. You can think of a tautology as a rule of logic.

The statement, “Ninoy Aquino was assassinated” (symbolized as N),

and the statement, “Either Ninoy Aquino was assassinated or else he
wasn’t” (symbolized as N v ~N), are both obviously true. But, we would
say, they are true “in different ways” or have “different kinds” of truth.

Similarly, the statement, “Ferdinand Marcos was assassinated”

(symbolized as F), and the statement “Ferdinand Marcos was both
assassinated and not assassinated” (symbolized as F • ~F), are both plainly
false—but they also are false “in different ways” or have “different kinds”
of falsehood.

These differences in the “kinds” of truth or of falsehood are

important and very great. That the statement N is true, and that the
statement F is false, are historical facts—facts about the way events did
happen. There is no logical necessity about them. Events might have
occurred differently, and therefore the truth values of such statements as N
and F must be discovered by an empirical study of history. But the
statement N v ~N although true, is not a truth of history. There is logical
necessity here: Events could not have been such as to make it false, and its
truth can be known independently of any particular empirical
investigation.

The statement N v ~N is a logical truth, a formal truth, true in virtue

of its form alone. It is a substitution instance of a statement form all of
whose substitution instances are true statements. A statement form that has
only true substitution instances is called a tautologous statement form, or a
tautology.

In exactly the same sense that individual arguments may be

substitution-instances of general argument forms, individual compound
statements can be substitution-instances of general statement forms. In
addition, just as we employ truth-tables to test the validity of those
arguments, we can use truth tables to exhibit interesting logical features of
some statement forms.

Consider a statement:

Matt is either 40 years old or not 40 years old.

That statement is a tautology, and it has a particular form, which

can be represented symbolically like this:

p v ~p

To show that the statement p ~p p v ~p

form p v ~q is a tautology, we T F T
construct the following truth F T T
table:

There is only one initial or guide column to this truth table, because
the form we are considering contains only one statement variable.
Consequently, there are only two rows, which represent all possible
substitution instances. There are only T’s in the column under the
statement form in question, and this fact shows that all of its substitution
instances are true. Any statement that is a substitution instance of a
tautologous statement form is true in virtue of its form, and is itself said to
be tautologous, or a tautology.

Notice that whether the component statement p is true or false makes no difference
to the truth-value of the statement form; it yields a true statement in either case. But it
follows that any compound statement which is a substitution-instance of this form—no
matter what its content—can be used only to make true assertions.

To further understand the concept of a tautology, consider for

example, (P ⊃ Q) V (Q ⊃ P):

We construct the truth table for and show that the formula is always
true.

p q p⊃q q⊃p (p ⊃ q) V (q⊃ p)

T T T T T

T F F T T

F T T F T

F F T T T

The last column contains only T's. Therefore, the formula is a tautology.

2. CONTRADICTION

The opposite of a tautology is a contradiction, a formula which is

"always false". In other words, a contradiction is false for every assignment
of truth values to its simple components. A statement form that has only
false substitution instances is said to be self-contradictory and is logically
false.

We consider a statement:

Matt is both 40 years old and not 40 years old.

 That statement is a contradiction, and it has a particular form, which
can be represented symbolically like this:

p • ~p
p ~p p • ~p
To show that the
statement form p • ~p is a T F F
contradiction, we construct
F T F
the following truth table:

The statement form p • ~p is self-contradictory, because only F’s occur

under it in its truth table, signifying that all of its substitution instances are
false. Any statement, such as F • ~F which is a substitution instance of a
self-contradictory statement form, is false in virtue of its form and is itself
said to be self-contradictory, or a contradiction.
Again, the truth-value of the component statement doesn't matter; the result
is always false. Compound statements that are substitution-instances of this
statement form can never be used to make true assertions.

Statement forms that have both true and false statements among their
substitution instances are called contingent statement forms. Any
statement whose specific form is contingent is called a contingent
statement. (It will be recalled that we are assuming here that no simple
statements are either logically true or logically false. Only contingent
simple statements are admitted here.)

When most statement forms are neither tautologous nor self-

contradictory; their truth-tables contain both Ts and Fs.

Thus: p⊃ ~q

p q p⊃ ~q
T T F
T F T
F T T
F F T

Since the column underneath it in the truth-table has at least one T

and at least one F, this statement form is contingent. Statements that are
substitution-instances of this statement form may be either true or false,
depending upon the truth-value of their component statements.

Thus p, ~ p, p v q, p • q and p⊃ q are all contingent statement forms,

and such statements as N, ~ N, N v F, N • F and N⊃ F and are contingent
statements, because their truth values are dependent, or contingent, on
their contents rather than on their forms alone.

Because all five of our statement connectives are truth-functional,

the status of every statement-form is determined by its internal structure.
In order to determine whether a statement form is tautologous, self-
contradictory, or contingent, we simply construct a truth-table and inspect
the appropriate column.

Consider, for example, the statement form:

(p ∨ ~q) ⊃ ~(p • q)

p q (p ∨ ~q) ⊃ ~(p • q)
T T T F F
T F T T T
F T F T T
F F T T T

Since the truth-table shows that statements of this form can be either
true or false, depending upon the truth-values of their components, the
statement form is contingent..

Finally, consider a statement:

Matt is either 39 years old or 40 years old

That statement is a contingent statement. It doesn’t have to be true

(as tautologies do) or false (as contradictions do). Instead, its truth
depends on the way the world is. Suppose that Matt is 39 years old. In
that case, the statement is true. But suppose he is 37 years old. In that
case, the statement is false (since he is neither 39 or 40).
C. Material Equivalence

Material equivalence is a truth-functional connective. The truth value

of any statement formed by linking two statements with a truth-functional
connective, as explained earlier, depends on (is a function of) the truth or
falsity of the statements it connects. Thus, we say that the disjunction of A
and B is true if either A is true or B is true or if they are both true.

Material equivalence is the truth-functional connective that asserts

that the statements it connects have the same truth value. Two statements
that are equivalent in truth value (when they are both true, or both false),
therefore, are materially equivalent.

Just as the symbol for disjunction is the wedge, and the symbol for
material implication is the horseshoe, there is also a special symbol for
material equivalence, the three-bar sign or tribar, “≡”. (Some systems
employ the symbol “ ”). And just as we gave truth-table definitions for
the wedge and the horseshoe, we can do so for the three-bar sign.

A material equivalence, symbolized here in the form:

p≡q

is a compound statement that is true whenever both of its component

statements have the same truth-value.

Here is the truth table for material equivalence, ≡ :

p q p≡q
T T T
T F F
F T F
F F T

Any two true statements materially imply one another; that is a

consequence of the meaning of material implication. And any two false
statements also materially imply one another. Therefore any two
statements that are materially equivalent must imply one another, because
they are either both true or both false.

Since any two statements, R and S, that are materially equivalent

imply one another, we may infer from their material equivalence that S is
true if R is true, and also that R is true only if S is true. The converse also
holds: R is true if S is true, and S is true only if R is true. Because both of
these relations are entailed by material equivalence, we can read the three-
bar sign, ≡ , to say “if and only if.”

For example,

The Reds will win if and only if their starting pitcher is not injured.

If we use the constant “R” to stand for the atomic proposition, “the
Reds will win” and “S” to stand for the atomic proposition, “the Reds’
starting pitcher is injured,” how would we translate this sentence using
truth functional connectives?

“If and only if” denotes a conditional statement. In particular, what

follows the “if and only if” phrase is a sufficient condition, and as we have
seen, a sufficient condition is always the antecedent of a conditional. But
notice that the sufficient condition also contains a negation. Thus, the
correct translation of this sentence is:

~S ⊃ R

One simple trick you can use to translate sentences which use the
term “if and only if” is just substitute the phrase “unless” for the “if and
only if.” But another trick is just to substitute an “or” for the “unless.”

 The Reds will win unless their starting pitcher is injured.

Although it may sound strange in English, a disjunction will always

capture the truth functional meaning of “unless.” Thus, we could also
correctly translate the sentence like this:

SvR

Two propositions are materially equivalent if and only if they have

the same truth value for every assignment of truth values to the atomic
propositions. That is, they have the same truth values on every row of a
truth table. The truth table below demonstrates that “~S ⊃ R” and “S v R”
are materially equivalent.

R S
T T
T F
F T
F F
~S ⊃ R SvR
T T
T T
T T
F F
 If you look at the truth values under the main operators of each
sentence, you can see that their truth values are identical on every row.
That means the two statements are materially equivalent and can be used
interchangeably, as far as propositional logic goes.

Let’s demonstrate material equivalence with another example. We

have seen that we can translate “neither nor” statements as a conjunction
of two negations. So, a statement of the form, “neither p nor q” can be
translated:

~p • ~q

But another way of translating statements of this form is as a

negation of a disjunction, like this:

~(p v q)

We can prove these two statements are materially equivalent with a

truth table (below).

p q ~p • ~q ~(p v q)
T T F F
T F F F
F T F F
F F T T

Again, as you can see from the truth table, the truth values under the
main operators of each sentence are identical on every row (i.e., for every
assignment of truth values to the atomic propositions).

Some common ways of expressing the biconditional in English are

with the phrases “if and only if” and “just in case.” If you have been
paying close attention (or do from now on out) you will see me use the
phrase “if and only if” often. It is most commonly used when one is giving
a definition, such as the definition of validity and also in defining the
“material equivalence” in this very section. It makes sense that the
biconditional would be used in this way since when we define something
we are laying down an equivalent way of saying it.
D. Arguments, Conditional Statements, and Tautologies

To every argument there corresponds a conditional statement whose

antecedent is the conjunction of the argument’s premises and whose
consequent is the argument’s conclusion. Thus, an argument having the
form of modus ponens,

p⊃q
p
∴q

may be expressed as a conditional statement of the form [(p⊃ q) • p] ⊃ q.

If the argument expressed as a conditional has a valid argument form, then
its conclusion must in every case follow from its premises, and therefore
the conditional statement of it may be shown on a truth table to be a
tautology. That is, the statement that the conjunction of the premises
implies the conclusion will (if the argument is valid) have all and only true
instances.

Truth tables are powerful devices for the evaluation of arguments.

An argument form is valid if and only if its truth table has a T under the
conclusion in every row in which there are T’s under all of its premises.
This follows from the precise meaning of validity. Now, if the conditional
statement expressing that argument form is made the heading of one
column of the truth table, an F can occur in that column only in a row in
which there are T’s under all the premises and an F under the conclusion.
But there will be no such row if the argument is valid. Hence only T’s will
occur under a conditional statement that corresponds to a valid argument,
and that conditional statement must be a tautology. We may therefore say
that an argument form is valid if, and only if, its expression in the form of a
conditional statement (of which the antecedent is the conjunction of the
premises of the given argument form, and the consequent is the conclusion
of the given argument form) is a tautology.

For every invalid argument of the truth-functional variety, however,

the corresponding conditional statement will not be a tautology. The
statement that the conjunction of its premises implies its conclusion is (for
an invalid argument) either contingent or contradictory.