DISCRETE STRUCTURES – IT113
INSTRUCTOR: MS. MARICRIS R. MANALOTO
EMAIL: crisregadillomanaloto@gmail.com
Introduction to LOGIC
Logic is a language for reasoning. It is a collection of
rules we use when doing logical reasoning. Human
reasoning has been observed over centuries from at
least the times of Greeks, and patterns appearing in
reasoning have been extracted, abstracted, and
streamlined. The foundation of the logic we are going
to learn here was laid down by a British
mathematician George Boole in the middle of the
19th century,
In logic we are interested in true or false of
statements, and how the truth/falsehood of a
statement can be determine by other statements.
There are various types of logic such as:
 logic of sentences (propositional logic)
 logic of objects (predicate logic)
 logic involving uncertainties
 logic dealing with incoherence
 temporal logic
Propositional logic is a logic at the sentential level.
The smallest unit we deal with in propositional logic is
a sentence. We do not go inside individual sentences
and analyze or discuss their meanings. We are going
to be interested only in true or false of sentences, and
Module 1 –Fundamentals of Propositional Logic
major concern is whether or not the truth or falsehood
of a certain sentence follows from those of a set of
sentences, and if so, how. Thus sentences considered
in this logic are not arbitrary sentences but are the
ones that are true or false. This kind of sentences are
called Propositions.
Proposition
Sentences considered in propositional logic are
not arbitrary sentences but are the ones that are
either t rue or false, but not both.
If a proposition is true, then we say it has a truth
value of "true"; if a proposition is false, its truth value is
"false".
Example:
 Grass is Green True
 2+2=5 False
In t he given examples, bot h are
answerable by True or False. Therefore t hey are
an examples of Proposit ion.
 Close the door
 Is it hot?
The following examples above are not
examples of Propositions, because t hey are
not answerable by t he True or False.
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DISCRETE STRUCTURES – IT113
INSTRUCTOR: MS. MARICRIS R. MANALOTO
Module 1 –Fundamentals of Propositional Logic
EMAIL: crisregadillomanaloto@gmail.com

NOT:
Elements of Propositional Logic
The propositions and connectives are the basic
elements of propositional logic. Though there are
many connectives, we are going to use the
following five basic connectives:
This table is easy to understand. If P is t rue, its
Five Basic connectives: They are also denoted negation is false. If P is false, then is it true.
by the symbols:
AND:
NOT
AND should be t rue when both P and Q are t rue,
and false otherwise:
OR

IF_THEN (IMPLY)
IF_AND_ONLY_IF

Truth Table

Mathematics normally works with a two-valued logic:

Every statement is either True or False. You can
use truth tables to determine the truth or falsity of a
complicated statement based on the truth or falsity
of its simple components.

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DISCRETE STRUCTURES – IT113
INSTRUCTOR: MS. MARICRIS R. MANALOTO
EMAIL: crisregadillomanaloto@gmail.com
OR:
is t rue if either P is t rue or Q is t rue (or both). It's
only false if both P and Q are false.
IF_THEN:
A statement of the form “If P then Q” asserts that
whenever P is true then Q is also true. This assertion (or
“promise”) is tested when P is true, because it is then
claimed that something else (namely Q) is true as
well. However, when Q is false then the statement “If
P then Q” claims nothing. Therefore when P is True
then Q is False it is False, True otherwise. Using the
symbols P⇒Q to denote “If P then Q”, we obtain the
following truth table:
Module 1 –Fundamentals of Propositional Logic
Notice that we use here an important principle of
Aristotelian logic: every sensible statement is either
true or false. There is no “in between” status. When P
is false we can hardly assert that P⇒Q is false. For P⇒Q
asserts that “whenever P is true then Q is true”, and P
is not true! Put in other words, when P is false then the
statement P⇒Q is not tested. It therefore cannot be
false. So it must be true. We refer to P as the
hypothesis of the implication and to Q as the
conclusion of the implication. When the if-then
statement is true, then the hypothesis implies the
conclusion.
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DISCRETE STRUCTURES – IT113
INSTRUCTOR: MS. MARICRIS R. MANALOTO
Module 1 –Fundamentals of Propositional Logic
EMAIL: crisregadillomanaloto@gmail.com

IF_AND_ONLY_IF:

means that P and Q are equivalent. So the

double implication is t rue if P and Q are both t rue or
if P and Q are both false; otherwise, the double
implication is false.

Exclusive Disjunction
I n addition to “inclusive or” (Disjunction) there is
Remarks. another meaning for OR in English called the “exclusive
or”, which means “either one or the other, but not both.”
When you're constructing a truth table, you have to I n logic exclusive or is referred to us Exclusiv e Disjunction.
consider all possible assignments of True (T) and False Exclusiv e or can be expressed using the basic
(F) to the component statements. For example, connectiv es ~(P Q) or Ɵ
suppose the component statements are P, Q, and R.
Each of these statements can be either true or false, P Q PƟQ
so there are possibilities. T T F
When you're listing the possibilities, you should assign T F T
truth values to the component statements in a F T T
systematic way to avoid duplication or omission. The
easiest approach is to use lexicographic ordering. F F F
Thus, for a compound statement with three
components P, Q, and R:

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