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In logic, the principle of excluded middle states that every truth value is either true or false (Aristotle, MP1011b24). (This is sometimes called the ‘axiom’ or ‘law’ of excluded middle, either to emphasise that it is or is not optional; ‘principle’ is a relatively neutral term.) One of the many meanings of classical logic is to emphasise that this principle holds in the logic; in contrast, it fails in intuitionistic logic.
The principle of excluded middle (hereafter, PEM), as a statement about truth values themselves, is accepted by nearly all mathematicians (classical mathematics); those who doubt or deny it are a distinct minority, the constructivists. However, when one internalises mathematics in categories other than the category of sets, there is no doubt that excluded middle often fails internally. See the examples listed at internal logic. (Those categories in which excluded middle holds are called Boolean; in general, the adjective ‘Boolean’ is often used to indicate the applicability of PEM.)
Although the term ‘excluded middle’ (sometimes even excluded third) suggests that the principle does not apply in many-valued logics, that is not the point; many-valued logics are many-valued externally but may still be two-valued internally. In the language of categorial logic, whether a category has exactly two subterminal objects is in general independent of whether it is Boolean; instead, the category is Boolean iff the statement that it has exactly two subterminal objects holds in its internal logic (which is in general independent of whether that statement is true).
In fact, intuitionistic logic proves that there is no truth value that is neither true nor false; in this sense, the possibility of a ‘middle’ or ‘third’ truth value is still ‘excluded’. But since the relevant de Morgan law fails in intuitionistic logic, we may not conclude that every truth value is either true or false, which is the actual PEM.
In material set theory, Shulman 18 makes the distinction between full classical logic, where the principle of excluded middle holds for all logical formulae in the material set theory, and -classical logic, where the principle of excluded middle holds for only holds for -formulae. -formulae are logical formulae where every quantifier has to be bounded by the membership relation; i.e. . In structural set theory, the above difference between full classical logic and -classical logic in material set theory is the difference between defining structural set theory as a well-pointed Boolean topos in classical logic and in intuitionistic logic respectively.
In dependent type theory, there are many statements of excluded middle.
The statement which directly corresponds to excluded middle in logic states that given a type , if is a mere proposition, then either or the negation of holds
where is the isProp modality commonly defined as , negation is simply the the function type into the empty type and disjunction is the bracket type of the sum type .
If one additionally has a Russell type of all propositions or a Tarski type of all propositions , the law of truncated excluded middle could be expressed as an axiom:
If the type theory has a boolean domain which is a univalent Tarski universe with type family and thus satisfies the extensionality principle, truncated excluded middle could be stated as given a type , if is a mere proposition, then there exists a boolean such that is equivalent to the type reflection of :
By definition, the only two booleans are representing false and representing true.
There is also an untruncated version of excluded middle, which uses the sum type instead of the disjunciton:
In the untruncated case, the requirement that be an h-proposition is necessary; the untruncated law of excluded middle for h-sets is the set-theoretic choice operator, which implies the set-theoretic axiom of choice in addition to excluded middle, and the untruncated law of excluded middle for general types is the type-theoretic choice operator, which implies UIP in addition to the set-theoretic axiom of choice and excluded middle.
If one additionally has a Russell type of all propositions or a Tarski type of all propositions , the law of untruncated excluded middle could be expressed as an axiom:
Similarly as above, if the type theory has a boolean domain which is a univalent Tarski universe with type family and thus satisfies the extensionality principle, there is also an untruncated version of excluded middle using the boolean domain and dependent sum types:
By definition, the only two booleans are representing false and representing true.
There is also a version of excluded middle, which uses contractibility instead of pointedness to express truth:
In dependent type theory as foundations of mathematics, the requirement that be an h-proposition is also necessary. This alternate law of untruncated excluded middle for general types implies that every type is a h-proposition a la propositional logic as a dependent type theory, because the only types such that is equivalent to the unit type are the empty type and the unit type, which are h-propositions:
If one additionally has a Russell type of all propositions or a Tarski type of all propositions , the law of excluded middle could be expressed as an axiom:
Similarly as above, if the type theory has a boolean domain which is a univalent Tarski universe with type family and thus satisfies the extensionality principle, there is also an contractible version of excluded middle using the boolean domain and dependent sum types:
or equivalently, using the boolean domain and the uniqueness quantifier:
By definition, the only two booleans are representing false and representing true.
The untruncated version of excluded middle implies the truncated version of excluded middle.
By the introduction rule of propositional truncations, there exists a function , and the truncated version of excluded middle is simply the composition of functions
The contractible version of excluded middle implies the untruncated version of excluded middle
The type is really the type
Thus, by the introduction rules of function types and the elimination rules of negative dependent sum types, there is a function
which is precisely the untruncated version of excluded middle
Excluded middle can be seen as a very weak form of the axiom of choice (a slightly more controversial principle, doubted or denied by a slightly larger minority, and true internally in even fewer categories). In fact, the following are equivalent. (this is the Diaconescu-Goodman-Myhill theorem due to Diaconescu 75, see also McLarty 96, theorem 19.7, )
(Here, a set is finite or finitely-indexed (respectively) if, for some natural number , there is a bijection or surjection (respectively) .)
The proof is as follows. If is a truth value, then divide by the equivalence relation where iff holds. Then we have a surjection , whose domain is (and in particular, finite), and whose codomain is 2-indexed (and thus finitely-indexed). But this surjection splits iff is true or false, so if either is choice or -indexed sets are projective, then PEM holds.
On the other hand, if PEM holds, then we can show by induction that if and are choice, so is (add details). Thus, all finite sets are choice. Now if is a surjection, exhibiting as finitely indexed, it has a section . Since a finite set is always projective, and any retract of a projective object is projective, this shows that is projective.
In particular, the axiom of choice implies PEM. This argument, due originally to Diaconescu, can be internalized in any topos. However, other weak versions of choice such as countable choice (any surjection to a countable set (which for this purpose is any set isomorphic to the set of natural numbers) has a section), dependent choice, or even COSHEP do not imply PEM.
While is often claimed that axiom of choice is true in constructive mathematics (by the BHK or Brouwer-Heyting-Kolmogorov interpretation of predicate logic), the BHK interpretation of the “axiom of choice” is simply the always true statement that indexed cartesian products distribute over indexed disjoint unions
or the always true statement that every split surjection splits.
Every set with a surjection from the boolean domain to is either a singleton or in bijection with the boolean domain.
The set of equivalence relations on the boolean domain is in bijection with the boolean domain.
Morgan Rogers showed here that the fact that the category of sets is a Boolean topos is equivalent to the fact that every pointed set is a free pointed set.
James Hanson showed here that every lower real number being a Dedekind real number is equivalent to LEM. Similarly, every upper real number being a Dedekind real number is equivalent to LEM.
Every subcountable set is a countable set.
The limited principle of omniscience holds for all subsingletons.
Sets with decidable tight apartness relations form a cartesian closed category.
Assuming function sets, the tight apartness relation on an inequality space is decidable.
The boolean domain is a frame iff the category of sets is a Boolean topos. This implies that one can do topology (using topological spaces, locales, formal topologies, etc) directly using the boolean domain as the frame of open truth values.
The poset of truth values is an inequality space.
The partial function classifier of any singleton is the boolean domain.
While PEM is not valid in constructive mathematics, its double negation
is valid. One way to see this is to note that is one of de Morgan's laws that is constructively valid, and is easy to prove (it is an instance of the law of non-contradiction?).
However, a more direct argument makes the structure of the proof more clear. When beta-reduced, the proof term? is . This means that we first assume for a contradiction, for which it suffices (by assumption) to prove . We prove that by proving , which we prove by assuming for a contradiction. But now we can reach a contradiction by invoking (again) our assumption of and proving this time using our new assumption of . In other words, we start out claiming that , but whenever that “bluff gets called” by someone supplying an and asking us to yield a contradiction, we retroactively change our minds and claim that instead, using the that we were just given as evidence.
In dependent type theory, the double negation of untruncated excluded middle holds for all types
The type has an element, the identity function . Given types , , and , there are equivalences
Thus, there is an element
In particular, this shows how the double negation modality can be regarded computationally as a sort of continuation-passing transform.
However, there is another meaning of “double negated PEM” that is not valid. The above argument shows that
But a stronger statement is
This is related to the above valid statement by a double-negation shift; and in fact, the truth of is equivalent to the principle of double-negation shift. In particular, it is not constructively provable.
One could add to cohesive homotopy type theory a version of excluded middle called the sharp law of excluded middle, given by the following rule:
where and , and is the sharp modality of , is the propositional truncation of and is the empty type.
Colin McLarty, Elementary Categories, Elementary Toposes, Oxford University Press, 1996
Mike Shulman, Comparing material and structural set theories, Annals of Pure and Applied Logic, Volume 170, Issue 4, April 2019, Pages 465-504 (doi:10.1016/j.apal.2018.11.002, arXiv:1808.05204)
Relation to the axiom of choice (Diaconescu-Goodman-Myhill theorem):
Radu Diaconescu, Axiom of choice and complementation, Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society 51:176-178 (1975) (doi:10.1090/S0002-9939-1975-0373893-X)
N. D. Goodman J. Myhill, Choice Implies Excluded Middle, Zeitschrift fuer Mathematische Logik und Grundlagen der Mathematik 24:461 (1978)
Relation to ex falso quodlibet and the law of double negation:
In cohesive homotopy type theory:
Last revised on September 25, 2024 at 23:22:56. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.