Many-valued logic (also multi- or multiple-valued logic) refers to a
propositional calculus in which there are more than two
truth values. Traditionally, in
Aristotle's
logical calculus
A formal system is an abstract structure used for inferring theorems from axioms according to a set of rules. These rules, which are used for carrying out the inference of theorems from axioms, are the logical calculus of the formal system.
A form ...
, there were only two possible values (i.e., "true" and "false") for any
proposition. Classical
two-valued logic may be extended to ''n''-valued logic for ''n'' greater than 2. Those most popular in the literature are
three-valued (e.g.,
Łukasiewicz's and
Kleene's, which accept the values "true", "false", and "unknown"),
four-valued,
nine-valued, the
finite-valued (finitely-many valued) with more than three values, and the
infinite-valued (infinitely-many-valued), such as
fuzzy logic
Fuzzy logic is a form of many-valued logic in which the truth value of variables may be any real number between 0 and 1. It is employed to handle the concept of partial truth, where the truth value may range between completely true and completely ...
and
probability logic Probabilistic logic (also probability logic and probabilistic reasoning) involves the use of probability and logic to deal with uncertain situations. Probabilistic logic extends traditional logic truth tables with probabilistic expressions. A diffi ...
.
History
It is
wrong that the first known classical logician who did not fully accept the
law of excluded middle was
Aristotle (who, ironically, is also generally considered to be the first classical logician and the "father of
wo-valuedlogic"). In fact, Aristotle did
not contest the universality of the law of excluded middle, but the universality of the bivalence principle: he admitted that this principle did not all apply to future events (''De Interpretatione'', ''ch. IX''), but he didn't create a system of multi-valued logic to explain this isolated remark. Until the coming of the 20th century, later logicians followed
Aristotelian logic
In philosophy, term logic, also known as traditional logic, syllogistic logic or Aristotelian logic, is a loose name for an approach to formal logic that began with Aristotle and was developed further in ancient history mostly by his followers, t ...
, which includes or assumes the
law of the excluded middle.
The 20th century brought back the idea of multi-valued logic. The Polish logician and philosopher
Jan Łukasiewicz began to create systems of many-valued logic in 1920, using a third value, "possible", to deal with Aristotle's
paradox of the sea battle. Meanwhile, the American mathematician,
Emil L. Post (1921), also introduced the formulation of additional truth degrees with ''n'' ≥ 2, where ''n'' are the truth values. Later, Jan Łukasiewicz and
Alfred Tarski together formulated a logic on ''n'' truth values where ''n'' ≥ 2. In 1932,
Hans Reichenbach
Hans Reichenbach (September 26, 1891 – April 9, 1953) was a leading philosopher of science, educator, and proponent of logical empiricism. He was influential in the areas of science, education, and of logical empiricism. He founded the ''Gesel ...
formulated a logic of many truth values where ''n''→∞.
Kurt Gödel
Kurt Friedrich Gödel ( , ; April 28, 1906 – January 14, 1978) was a logician, mathematician, and philosopher. Considered along with Aristotle and Gottlob Frege to be one of the most significant logicians in history, Gödel had an imme ...
in 1932 showed that
intuitionistic logic is not a
finitely-many valued logic, and defined a system of
Gödel logics intermediate between
classical and intuitionistic logic; such logics are known as
intermediate logics.
Examples
Kleene (strong) and Priest logic
Kleene's "(strong) logic of indeterminacy" (sometimes
) and
Priest's "logic of paradox" add a third "undefined" or "indeterminate" truth value . The truth functions for
negation
In logic, negation, also called the logical complement, is an operation that takes a proposition P to another proposition "not P", written \neg P, \mathord P or \overline. It is interpreted intuitively as being true when P is false, and false ...
(¬),
conjunction (∧),
disjunction
In logic, disjunction is a logical connective typically notated as \lor and read aloud as "or". For instance, the English language sentence "it is raining or it is snowing" can be represented in logic using the disjunctive formula R \lor S ...
(∨),
implication (), and
biconditional () are given by:
The difference between the two logics lies in how
tautologies are defined. In only is a ''designated truth value'', while in both and are (a logical formula is considered a tautology if it evaluates to a designated truth value). In Kleene's logic can be interpreted as being "underdetermined", being neither true nor false, while in Priest's logic can be interpreted as being "overdetermined", being both true and false. does not have any tautologies, while has the same tautologies as classical two-valued logic.
Bochvar's internal three-valued logic
Another logic is Dmitry Bochvar's "internal" three-valued logic
, also called Kleene's weak three-valued logic. Except for negation and biconditional, its truth tables are all different from the above.
The intermediate truth value in Bochvar's "internal" logic can be described as "contagious" because it propagates in a formula regardless of the value of any other variable.
Belnap logic ()
Belnap's logic combines and . The overdetermined truth value is here denoted as ''B'' and the underdetermined truth value as ''N''.
Gödel logics ''Gk'' and ''G''∞
In 1932
Gödel defined a family
of many-valued logics, with finitely many truth values
, for example
has the truth values
and
has
. In a similar manner he defined a logic with infinitely many truth values,
, in which the truth values are all the
real numbers in the interval