Logical constant

In logic, a logical constant of a language $\mathcal{L}$ is a symbol that has the same semantic value under every interpretation of $\mathcal{L}$ . Two important types of logical constants are logical connectives and quantifiers. The equality predicate (usually written '=') is also treated as a logical constant in many systems of logic.

Some symbols that are commonly treated as logical constants are:

Symbol	Meaning in English
T	"true"
F	"false"
¬	"not"
∧	"and"
∨	"or"
→	"implies", "if...then"
∀	"for all"
∃	"there exists", "for some"
=	"equals"
$\Box$	"necessary"
$\Diamond$	"possible"

For many logical constants also other symbols are commonly used to denote them, such as the symbol "&" for logical and.

One of the fundamental questions in the philosophy of logic is "What is a logical constant?"; that is, what special feature of certain constants that makes them logical in nature?

References

^ Carnap

External links

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on logical constants

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