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The “implies” connective “$\rightarrow$” is one of the stranger connectives in propositional logic. Below are a series of statements regarding implications.

Which of the following statements is/are TRUE?

  1. For any propositions $P$ and $Q,$ the following is always true: $(P \rightarrow Q) \vee (Q \rightarrow P).$
  2. For any propositions $P, Q$ and $R$, the following statement is always true: $(P\rightarrow Q) \vee (Q \rightarrow R).$
  3. For any propositions $P, Q$ and $R$, the following statement is always true: $(P\rightarrow Q) \vee (\neg P \rightarrow R).$
  4. For any propositions $P, Q$ and $R,$ the following statement is always true: $(P \rightarrow Q) \vee (R \rightarrow Q)$.
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Detailed Video Solution: https://youtu.be/WjixNxzbkAQ  

A. For any propositions $\text{P}$ and $\text{Q},$ the following is always true: $(\text{P} \rightarrow \text{Q}) \vee (\text{Q} \rightarrow \text{P}).$

$\textbf{Proof}:$
Here's one way to see this. If $\text{Q}$ is true, then $\text{P} \rightarrow \text{Q}$ is true because anything implies a true statement. If $\text{Q}$ is false, then $\text{Q} \rightarrow \text{P}$ is true because false implies anything. (If this is confusing, you should review the truth table for $\rightarrow )$

B. For any propositions $\text{P}, \text{Q},$ and $\text{R},$ the following statement is always true: $(\text{P} \rightarrow \text{Q}) \vee (\text{Q} \rightarrow \text{R}).$

$\textbf{Proof}:$
This is basically the same argument as before. If $\text{Q}$ is true, then $\text{P} \rightarrow \text{Q}$
is true because anything implies a true statement. If $\text{Q}$ is false, then $\text{Q} \rightarrow \text{R}$ is true because false implies anything.

Of all the connectives we've seen, the $\rightarrow$ connective is probably the trickiest. We asked this question to force you to disentangle notions of correlation or causality from the behavior of the $\rightarrow$ connective.

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Another way is to simplify them first :

(P→Q) ∨ (Q→P)     =     P' ∨ Q ∨ Q' ∨ P = Tautology

(P→Q) ∨ (Q→R)     =     P' ∨ Q ∨ Q' ∨ R = Tautology

 

(P→Q) ∨ (¬P→R)    =    P' ∨ Q ∨ P ∨ R = Tautology

(P→Q) ∨ (R→Q)      =    P' ∨ Q ∨ R' ∨ Q   =   P' ∨ Q ∨ R'   =   Not Tautology

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