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17 views16 pages

6 Rules of Inference 1

Uploaded by

somanfatima33
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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1

CSC102: Discrete Structure


Credit Hours: 3(3,0)
Lecture #: 9
Unit: 2

Instructor:
MISHAL IQBAL

COMSATS University Islamabad


Vehari Campus
2

Topic

Rules of Inference
3
Valid arguments
Rules of Inference (1)
 Proofs in mathematics are valid arguments that establish the truth
of mathematical statements.
 By an argument, we mean a sequence of statements that end with
a conclusion.
 By valid, we mean that the conclusion, or final statement of the
argument, must follow from the truth of the preceding statements,
or premises, of the argument.
 We use rules of inference which are templates for constructing
valid arguments.
 Rules of inference are our basic tools for establishing the truth of
statements.
4
Valid
Rules of Inference arguments(2)
Consider the following argument involving propositions
(which, by definition, is a sequence of propositions):
“If you have a current password, then you can log onto the
network.”
“You have a current password.”
Therefore,
“You can log onto the network.”
We would like to determine whether this is a valid argument.
That is, we would like to determine whether the conclusion
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Valid
Rules of Inference arguments(3)
“You can log onto the network” must be true when the premises
“If you have a current password, then you can log onto the
network” and “You have a current password” are both true.
We replaced propositions by propositional variables. This
changed an argument to an argument form.
Use p to represent “You have a current password” and q to
represent “You can log onto the network.” argument form:

We know that when p and q are propositional variables, the


statement ((p → q) ∧ p) → q is a tautology.
6
Valid
Rules of Inference arguments(4)
In particular, when both p → q and p are true, we know that q
must also be true.
We say this form of argument is valid because whenever all its
premises (all statements in the argument other than the final
one, the conclusion) are true, the conclusion must also be true.
This argument is valid because its form is valid.

Note that whenever we replace p and q by propositions where


p → q and p are both true, then q must also be true.
7
Valid
Rules of Inference arguments(5)

What happens when we replace p and q in this argument form


by propositions where not both p and p → q are true?
Suppose that p represents “You have access to the network”
and q represents “You can change your grade” and that p is
true, but p → q is false.
8
Valid
Rules of Inference arguments(6)
The argument we obtain by substituting these values of
p and q into the argument form is

The argument we obtained is a valid argument, but because


one of the premises, namely the first premise, is false, we
cannot conclude that the conclusion is true. (Most likely, this
conclusion is false.)
9
Valid
Rules of Inference arguments(7)
An argument in propositional logic is a sequence of
propositions. All but the final proposition in the argument are
called premises and the final proposition is called the
conclusion. An argument is valid if the truth of all its premises
implies that the conclusion is true.
An argument form in propositional logic is a sequence of
compound propositions involving propositional variables. An
argument form is valid no matter which particular propositions
are substituted for the propositional variables in its premises,
the conclusion is true if the premises are all true.
10
Valid
Rules of Inference arguments(8)

From the definition of a valid argument form we see that the


argument form with premises p1, p2, . . . , pn and conclusion q
is valid, when (p1 ∧ p2 ∧ · · · ∧ pn) → q is a tautology.
The key to showing that an argument in propositional logic is
valid is to show that its argument form is valid.
For 11
Propositional
Rules of Inference logic
We can always use a truth table (a tedious approach) to show
that an argument form is valid.
We do this by showing that whenever the premises are true,
the conclusion must also be true.
E.g., when an argument form involves 10 different
propositional variables, to use a truth table to show this
10
argument form is valid requires 2 = 1024 different rows.
Fortunately, we do not have to resort to truth tables.
Instead, we can first establish the validity of some relatively
simple argument forms, called rules of inference.
For 12
Propositional
Rules of Inference logic
These rules of inference can be used as building blocks to
construct more complicated valid argument forms.
We will now introduce the most important rules of inference in
propositional logic.
The tautology (p ∧ (p → q)) → q is the basis of the rule of
inference called modus ponens, or the law of detachment.
For 13
Propositional
Rules of Inference logic
Rules of Inference For Propositional
logic
14
For Quantified
Rules of Inference Statements
15
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