Relations vs functions at the foundations of logic: type-theoretic considerations

Journal of Logic and Computation 21:351-374 (2011)
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Abstract

Though Frege was interested primarily in reducing mathematics to logic, he succeeded in reducing an important part of logic to mathematics by defining relations in terms of functions. By contrast, Whitehead & Russell reduced an important part of mathematics to logic by defining functions in terms of relations (using the definite description operator). We argue that there is a reason to prefer Whitehead & Russell's reduction of functions to relations over Frege's reduction of relations to functions. There is an interesting system having a logic that can be properly characterized in relational but not in functional type theory. This shows that relational type theory is more general than functional type theory. The simplification offered by Church in his functional type theory is an over-simplification: one can't assimilate predication to functional application.<br>.

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Author Profiles

Paul Edward Oppenheimer
Stanford University
Edward Zalta
Stanford University

References found in this work

Mathematical Logic as Based on the Theory of Types.Bertrand Russell - 1908 - American Journal of Mathematics 30 (3):222-262.
A formulation of the simple theory of types.Alonzo Church - 1940 - Journal of Symbolic Logic 5 (2):56-68.
An Unsolvable Problem of Elementary Number Theory.Alonzo Church - 1936 - Journal of Symbolic Logic 1 (2):73-74.
A Formulation of the Simple Theory of Types.Alonzo Church - 1940 - Journal of Symbolic Logic 5 (3):114-115.

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