Need help formalising simple propositional logic sentences

logicpropositional-calculus

I'm a beginner learning about propositional logic and how to formalise sentences.

I'm currently working through the following sentences and translating them into logical statements.

  • $p$ means “Emily is happy”
  • $q$ means “Emily paints a picture”
  • $r$ means “David is happy”

1. If Emily is happy then Emily paints a picture.

This is $p \implies q$.

2. If Emily is happy and paints a picture then David is not happy.

This is $[p ∧ q] \implies ¬r$.

3. David and Emily cannot both be happy.

I'm stuck on this last one.

I'm finding it difficult to understand how to go about formalising the last sentence. I was thinking it may include negating both $p$ and $r$ but the word "cannot" kinda throws me a bit. Any suggestions? Sorry if it's really obvious but I really am just starting out!

Best Answer

I can understand that the use of 'cannot' is a bit confusing ... it seems to be stronger than just saying that David and Emily are not both happy: they may not both be happy now, sure, but to say that they cannot both be happy seems to say that they can't ever both be happy, i.e. that it is impossible for both to be happy.

In fact, in modal logic you can express these kinds of stronger claims, where:

$\square P$ means "It is necessary that P is true"

$\Diamond P$ means "It is possible that P is true"

Using those symbols, translating "David and Emily cannot both be happy" can be done as:

$\neg \Diamond (r \land p)$

or, equivalently:

$\square \neg (r \land p)$

But, I assume you are currently not doing any model logic at all, since you are just starting with propositional logic. As such, you should really just treat the sentence as "David and Emily are not both happy"

Good for you for noticing that those two sentences are not quite the same thing though!!