lower predicate calculus

A predicate calculus in which the only variables that occur in quantifiers are individual variables is known as a lower (or first-order) predicate calculus. Various lower predicate calculi have been constructed. In the most straightforward of these, to which the most…

…systems did exist—for example, the first-order predicate calculus—but none had been found capable of allowing mathematicians to do interesting mathematics.

…logic, quantification theory, or the lower predicate calculus. Logical systems in which quantification is also allowed over higher-order entities are known as higher-order logics. This separation of first-order from higher-order logic was accomplished largely by David Hilbert and his associates in the second decade of the 20th century; it was…

…to be identified with the predicate calculus of the first order, the calculus in which the variables are confined to individuals of a fixed domain—though it may include as well the logic of identity, symbolized “=,” which takes the ordinary properties of identity as part of logic. In this sense…

The problem of consistency for the predicate calculus is relatively simple. A world may be assumed in which there is only one object a. In this case, both the universally quantified and the existentially quantified sentences (∀x)A(x) and (∃ x)A(x) reduce to…

…by making analogous additions to LPC instead of to PC.

There has been outlined above a proof of the completeness of elementary logic without including sentences asserting identity. The proof can be extended, however, to the full elementary logic in a fairly direct manner. Thus, if F is a sentence containing equality, a…

…a rather modest form of LPC that contains no predicate variables and only a single primitive dyadic predicate constant (∊) to represent membership. Sometimes LPC-with-identity is used, and there are then two primitive dyadic predicate constants (∊ and =). In some versions the variables x, y, … are taken to…