First-order logic

First-order logic – also known as first-order predicate calculus and predicate logic – is a collection of formal systems used in mathematics, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science. First-order logic uses quantified variables over non-logical objects and allows the use of sentences that contain variables, so that rather than propositions such as Socrates is a man one can have expressions in the form "there exists X such that X is Socrates and X is a man" where there exists is a quantifier and X is a variable. This distinguishes it from propositional logic, which does not use quantifiers.

A theory about a topic is usually a first-order logic together with a specified domain of discourse over which the quantified variables range, finitely many functions from that domain to itself, finitely many predicates defined on that domain, and a set of axioms believed to hold for those things. Sometimes "theory" is understood in a more formal sense, which is just a set of sentences in first-order logic.

The adjective "first-order" distinguishes first-order logic from higher-order logic in which there are predicates having predicates or functions as arguments, or in which one or both of predicate quantifiers or function quantifiers are permitted. In first-order theories, predicates are often associated with sets. In interpreted higher-order theories, predicates may be interpreted as sets of sets.

There are many deductive systems for first-order logic which are both sound (all provable statements are true in all models) and complete (all statements which are true in all models are provable). Although the logical consequence relation is only semidecidable, much progress has been made in automated theorem proving in first-order logic. First-order logic also satisfies several metalogical theorems that make it amenable to analysis in proof theory, such as the Löwenheim–Skolem theorem and the compactness theorem.

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