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Metavariable (logic)
In logic, a metavariable (also metalinguistic variable or syntactical variable) is a symbol or symbol string which belongs to a metalanguage and stands for elements of some object language. For instance, in the sentence :''Let A and B be two sentences of a language ℒ'' the symbols A and B are part of the metalanguage in which the statement about the object language ℒ is formulated. John Corcoran considers this terminology unfortunate because it obscures the use of schemata and because such "variables" do not actually range over a domain. The convention is that a metavariable is to be uniformly substituted with the same instance in all its appearances in a given schema. This is in contrast with nonterminal symbols in formal grammars where the nonterminals on the right of a production can be substituted by different instances.. Attempts to formalize the notion of metavariable result in some kind of type theory.Masahiko Sato, Takafumi Sakurai, Yukiyoshi Kameyama, and Atsushi I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Logic
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premises in a topic-neutral way. When used as a countable noun, the term "a logic" refers to a logical formal system that articulates a proof system. Formal logic contrasts with informal logic, which is associated with informal fallacies, critical thinking, and argumentation theory. While there is no general agreement on how formal and informal logic are to be distinguished, one prominent approach associates their difference with whether the studied arguments are expressed in formal or informal languages. Logic plays a central role in multiple fields, such as philosophy, mathematics, computer science, and linguistics. Logic studies arguments, which consist of a set of premises together with a conclusion. Premises and conclusions are usually un ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Symbol (formal)
A logical symbol is a fundamental concept in logic, tokens of which may be marks or a configuration of marks which form a particular pattern. Although the term "symbol" in common use refers at some times to the idea being symbolized, and at other times to the marks on a piece of paper or chalkboard which are being used to express that idea; in the formal languages studied in mathematics and logic, the term "symbol" refers to the idea, and the marks are considered to be a token instance of the symbol. In logic, symbols build literal utility to illustrate ideas. Overview Symbols of a formal language need not be symbols ''of'' anything. For instance there are logical constants which do not refer to any idea, but rather serve as a form of punctuation in the language (e.g. parentheses). Symbols of a formal language must be capable of being specified without any reference to any interpretation of them. A symbol or string of symbols may comprise a well-formed formula if it is consis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metalanguage
In logic and linguistics, a metalanguage is a language used to describe another language, often called the ''object language''. Expressions in a metalanguage are often distinguished from those in the object language by the use of italics, quotation marks, or writing on a separate line. The structure of sentences and phrases in a metalanguage can be described by a metasyntax. Types There are a variety of recognized metalanguages, including ''embedded'', ''ordered'', and ''nested'' (or ''hierarchical'') metalanguages. Embedded An embedded metalanguage is a language formally, naturally and firmly fixed in an object language. This idea is found in Douglas Hofstadter's book, '' Gödel, Escher, Bach'', in a discussion of the relationship between formal languages and number theory: "... it is in the nature of any formalization of number theory that its metalanguage is embedded within it." It occurs in natural, or informal, languages, as well—such as in English, where words ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Corcoran (logician)
John Corcoran ( ; 20 March 1937 - 8 January 2021) was an American logician, philosopher, mathematician, and historian of logic. He is best known for his philosophical work on concepts such as the nature of inference, relations between conditions, argument-deduction-proof distinctions, the relationship between logic and epistemology, and the place of proof theory and model theory in logic. Nine of Corcoran's papers have been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Persian, and Arabic; his 1989 "signature" essay was translated into three languages. Fourteen of his papers have been reprinted; one was reprinted twice. His work on Aristotle's logic of the '' Prior Analytics'' is regarded as being highly faithful both to the Greek text and to the historical context. It is the basis for many subsequent investigations. His mathematical results on definitional equivalence of formal character-string theories, sciences of strings of characters over finite alphabets, are foundational for lo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Schema (logic)
In logic, logical form of a statement is a precisely-specified semantic version of that statement in a formal system. Informally, the logical form attempts to formalize a possibly ambiguous statement into a statement with a precise, unambiguous logical interpretation with respect to a formal system. In an ideal formal language, the meaning of a logical form can be determined unambiguously from syntax alone. Logical forms are semantic, not syntactic constructs; therefore, there may be more than one string that represents the same logical form in a given language. The logical form of an argument is called the argument form of the argument. History The importance of the concept of form to logic was already recognized in ancient times. Aristotle, in the '' Prior Analytics'', was probably the first to employ variable letters to represent valid inferences. Therefore, Jan Łukasiewicz claims that the introduction of variables was "one of Aristotle's greatest inventions." According ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nonterminal
In computer science, terminal and nonterminal symbols are the lexical elements used in specifying the production rules constituting a formal grammar. ''Terminal symbols'' are the elementary symbols of the language defined by a formal grammar. ''Nonterminal symbols'' (or ''syntactic variables'') are replaced by groups of terminal symbols according to the production rules. The terminals and nonterminals of a particular grammar are two disjoint sets. Terminal symbols Terminal symbols are literal symbols that may appear in the outputs of the production rules of a formal grammar and which cannot be changed using the rules of the grammar. Applying the rules recursively to a source string of symbols will usually terminate in a final output string consisting only of terminal symbols. Consider a grammar defined by two rules. Using pictoric marks interacting with each other: # The symbol ר can become ди # The symbol ר can become д Here д is a terminal symbol because no rule ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Formal Grammars
In formal language theory, a grammar (when the context is not given, often called a formal grammar for clarity) describes how to form strings from a language's alphabet that are valid according to the language's syntax. A grammar does not describe the meaning of the strings or what can be done with them in whatever context—only their form. A formal grammar is defined as a set of production rules for such strings in a formal language. Formal language theory, the discipline that studies formal grammars and languages, is a branch of applied mathematics. Its applications are found in theoretical computer science, theoretical linguistics, formal semantics, mathematical logic, and other areas. A formal grammar is a set of rules for rewriting strings, along with a "start symbol" from which rewriting starts. Therefore, a grammar is usually thought of as a language generator. However, it can also sometimes be used as the basis for a "recognizer"—a function in computing that de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Type Theory
In mathematics, logic, and computer science, a type theory is the formal presentation of a specific type system, and in general type theory is the academic study of type systems. Some type theories serve as alternatives to set theory as a foundation of mathematics. Two influential type theories that were proposed as foundations are Alonzo Church's typed λ-calculus and Per Martin-Löf's intuitionistic type theory. Most computerized proof-writing systems use a type theory for their foundation. A common one is Thierry Coquand's Calculus of Inductive Constructions. History Type theory was created to avoid a paradox in a mathematical foundation based on naive set theory and formal logic. Russell's paradox, which was discovered by Bertrand Russell, existed because a set could be defined using "all possible sets", which included itself. Between 1902 and 1908, Bertrand Russell proposed various "theories of type" to fix the problem. By 1908 Russell arrived at a "ramified" theory ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
EACSL
The European Association for Computer Science Logic (EACSL), founded 14 July 1992, . Description of goals from EACSL official website. is an international professional non-profit organization representing the interests of its members and promoting logic in the areas of and education. It supports both basic and application oriented research to advance the connections between basic research and industrial applications. The current president is Prof. Thomas Schwentick ( |
Lecture Notes In Computer Science
''Lecture Notes in Computer Science'' is a series of computer science books published by Springer Science+Business Media since 1973. Overview The series contains proceedings, post-proceedings, monographs, and Festschrifts. In addition, tutorials, state-of-the-art surveys, and "hot topics" are increasingly being included. The series is indexed by DBLP. See also *''Monographiae Biologicae'', another monograph series published by Springer Science+Business Media *''Lecture Notes in Physics'' *''Lecture Notes in Mathematics'' *''Electronic Workshops in Computing ''Electronic Workshops in Computing'' (eWiC) is a publication series by the British Computer Society. The series provides free online access for conferences and workshops in the area of computing. For example, the EVA London Conference proceeding ...'', published by the British Computer Society References External links * Publications established in 1973 Computer science books Series of non-fiction books Springer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Explicit Substitution
In computer science, lambda calculi are said to have explicit substitutions if they pay special attention to the formalization of the process of substitution. This is in contrast to the standard lambda calculus where substitutions are performed by beta reductions in an implicit manner which is not expressed within the calculus; the "freshness" conditions in such implicit calculi are a notorious source of errors. The concept has appeared in a large number of published papers in quite different fields, such as in abstract machines, predicate logic, and symbolic computation. Overview A simple example of a lambda calculus with explicit substitution is "λx", which adds one new form of term to the lambda calculus, namely the form M⟨x:=N⟩, which reads "M where x will be substituted by N". (The meaning of the new term is the same as the common idiom let x:=N in M from many programming languages.) λx can be written with the following rewriting rules: # (λx.M) N → M&lang ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A K Peters
A K Peters, Ltd. was a publisher of scientific and technical books, specializing in mathematics and in computer graphics, robotics, and other fields of computer science. They published the journals ''Experimental Mathematics'' and the '' Journal of Graphics Tools'', as well as mathematics books geared to children. Background Klaus Peters wrote a doctoral dissertation on complex manifolds at the University of Erlangen in 1962, supervised by Reinhold Remmert. He then joined Springer Verlag, becoming their first specialist mathematics editor. As a Springer director from 1971, he hired Alice Merker for Springer New York: they were married that year, and moved to Heidelberg. Leaving Springer, they founded Birkhäuser Boston in 1979; Birkhäuser ran into financial difficulties, and was taken over by Springer. Klaus and Alice then spent a period running a Boston office for Harcourt Brace Jovanovich and their imprint Academic Press. With the takeover of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich by Gener ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
