Can a proposition be false and its negation be false in Intuitionistic logic?

computabilityconventionintuitionistic-logiclogic

The principle of non-contradiction say that p and $\neg$ p can not be both true.

  1. If you consider the law of excluded middle as relevant, then either
    p or $\neg$ p is true, and thus the other is false by the principle
    of non-contradiction.
  2. But if you consider the excluded middle as not relevant, just like
    intuitionistic logic, what would avoid some p and $\neg$ p to be
    both false ?

Actually, if true is the same than provable, then such a proposition is just a Gödel one : p is not provable and neither $\neg$ p is.

I think this is a very good interpretation and a big demystification of Gödel theorem : it is not about some true that we can not reach, it is about some absurdity that is still an absurdity when you negate it.

Best Answer

The statement "$p$ and $\neg p$ are both false" is formally expressed as $$\neg p \land \neg \neg p,$$ which is false by the law of non-contradiction, which states that for any $q$ the proposition $q \land \neg q$ is false (take $q = \neg p$).

More importantly, these consideration do not "demistyfy Gödel", as they refer to proposition with free propositional variables in them. Gödel constructed a sentence, i.e., a logical formula without free parameters, which is neither provable nor falsifiable (in a given formal system).

To put it another way, it is very easy to find a formula which is neither provable nor falsifiable, if we allow free variables, for example $$x < 42$$ where $x$ ranges over the natural numbers (say, in Peano arithmetic) is not provable, but neither is $$\neg (x < 42).$$

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