Proofs without syntax

From MaRDI portal
Publication:2469641




Abstract: "[M]athematicians care no more for logic than logicians for mathematics." Augustus de Morgan, 1868. Proofs are traditionally syntactic, inductively generated objects. This paper presents an abstract mathematical formulation of propositional calculus (propositional logic) in which proofs are combinatorial (graph-theoretic), rather than syntactic. It defines a *combinatorial proof* of a proposition P as a graph homomorphism h : C -> G(P), where G(P) is a graph associated with P and C is a coloured graph. The main theorem is soundness and completeness: P is true iff there exists a combinatorial proof h : C -> G(P).









This page was built for publication: Proofs without syntax

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q2469641)