connectives

CONNECTIVES

Ceqli connectives are based on the Loglan connectives. They are:

he - and
ha - and/or
ho - if and only if
hu - whether or not

da corn he kanin. He is black and is a dog.
da corn ha kanin. He is black or is a dog, and possibly both.
da corn ho kanin. He is black if and only if is a dog.
da corn hu kanin. He is black whether he is a dog or not.

These are all based on the principles of symbolic logic.

To say "if" a compound connective is used:

buha - if

da corn buha kanin. If he is black, he is a dog.

The logic of this is hard to penetrate, but it actually makes sense. The bu applies to the first clause, so what we're saying is that

He is not-black or he's a dog, and possibly both.

Let's say he's not-black. Then, according to that sentence, it's possible that he's not a dog, and also that he's not a dog. So far, so good.

Let's say he's black. Then, still according to that sentence, it's certainly possible that he's a dog, but is it possible for him not to be a dog?

Well, the first clause is untrue. He is black, not not-black. So what about the second clause? It can't be untrue, because of the truth values of and/or.

X and/or Y. Look at it. Both can be true, or one true and the other false. They can't both be false. So if the first clause, "He is not-black" is untrue (which it is — he's black), then the second clause has to be true, so he is a dog.

Suppose you want to say the "opposite"....

He is black if he's a dog.

Very simple. You switch buha around to habu, making the bu refer to the second clause, and you have the same sort of phenomenon with the truth tables.

da corn buha kanin. He is a dog if he's black.