Propositional logic theorem prover

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CanProve -- try to prove statement

Standard library

Calling format:

CanProve(proposition)

Parameters:

Description:

An example of a proposition is: "if a implies b and b implies c then a implies c". Yacas supports the following logical operations:

Not : negation, read as "not"

And : conjunction, read as "and"

Or : disjunction, read as "or"

=> : implication, read as "implies"

The abovementioned proposition would be represented by the following expression,

( (a=>b) And (b=>c) ) => (a=>c)

Yacas can prove that is correct by applying CanProve to it:

In> CanProve(( (a=>b) And (b=>c) ) => (a=>c)) Out> True;

It does this in the following way: in order to prove a proposition p, it suffices to prove that Not p is false. It continues to simplify Not p using the rules:

Not ( Not x) --> x

(eliminate double negation),

x=>y --> Not x Or y

(eliminate implication),

Not (x And y) --> Not x Or Not y

(De Morgan's law),

Not (x Or y) --> Not x And Not y

(De Morgan's law),

(x And y) Or z --> (x Or z) And (y Or z)

(distribution),

x Or (y And z) --> (x Or y) And (x Or z)

(distribution), and the obvious other rules, such as,

True Or x --> True

etc. The above rules will translate a proposition into a form

(p1 Or p2 Or ...) And (q1 Or q2 Or ...) And ...

If any of the clauses is false, the entire expression will be false. In the next step, clauses are scanned for situations of the form:

(p Or Y) And ( Not p Or Z) --> (Y Or Z)

If this combination (Y Or Z) is empty, it is false, and thus the entire proposition is false.

As a last step, the algorithm negates the result again. This has the added advantage of simplifying the expression further.

Examples:

In> CanProve(a  Or   Not a)
Out> True;
In> CanProve(True  Or  a)
Out> True;
In> CanProve(False  Or  a)
Out> a;
In> CanProve(a  And   Not a)
Out> False;
In> CanProve(a  Or b Or (a And b))
Out> a Or b;

See also: