COLLEGE OF COMPUTER

STUDIES
PREPARED BY: P. A. FERNANDEZ

Discrete Structures
LE S S O N 2

Tautologies
Inlogic, atautologyis aformulathat is true in every
possibleinterpretation.
PhilosopherLudwig Wittgensteinfirst applied the term to
redundancies ofpropositional logicin 1921. (It had been used
earlier to refer torhetorical tautologies, and continues to be
used in that alternative sense.)
A formula issatisfiableif 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 ascontradictions.

Tautologies
A formula that is neither a tautology nor a contradiction is
said to belogically contingent.
Tautologies are a key concept inpropositional 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
aneffective methodexists for testing whether a given
formula is always satisfied (or, equivalently, whether its
negation is unsatisfiable).

Tautologies
Propositional logic begins withpropositional variables,
atomic units that represent concrete propositions.
Aformulaconsists 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.
Avaluationis a function that assigns each propositional
variable either T (for truth) or F (for falsity).

Tautologies
So, for example, using the propositional variablesAandB,
the binary
connectives \/and /\representingdisjunctionandconjunct
ionrespectively, and the unary
connectiverepresentingnegation, the following formula
can be obtained
.
A valuation here must assign to each ofAandBeither 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
ofAandBis assigned F, which will cause the corresponding
later disjunct to be T.

Definition and Examples

A formula of propositional logic is atautologyif 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

AB

(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