Principle of Bivalence - Relationship With The Law of The Excluded Middle

Relationship With The Law of The Excluded Middle

The principle of bivalence is related to the law of excluded middle though the latter is a syntactic expression of the language of a logic of the form "P ∨ ¬P". The difference between the principle and the law is important because there are logics which validate the law but which do not validate the principle. For example, the three-valued Logic of Paradox (LP) validates the law of excluded middle, but not the law of non-contradiction, ¬(P ∧ ¬P), and its intended semantics is not bivalent. In classical two-valued logic both the law of excluded middle and the law of non-contradiction hold.

Many modern logic programming systems replace the law of the excluded middle with the concept of negation as failure. The programmer may wish to add the law of the excluded middle by explicitly asserting it as true; however, it is not assumed a priori.

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