A Word On Notation and The Axiom of Choice
As a language with infinitely long formulae is being presented, it is not possible to write expressions down as they should be written. To get around this problem a number of notational conveniences, which, strictly speaking, are not part of the formal language, are used. is used to point out an expression that is infinitely long. Where it is unclear, the length of the sequence is noted afterwards. Where this notation becomes ambiguous or confusing, suffixes such as are used to indicate an infinite disjunction over a set of formulae of cardinality . The same notation may be applied to quantifiers for example . This is meant to represent an infinite sequence of quantifiers for each where .
All usage of suffixes and are not part of formal infinitary languages. The axiom of choice is assumed (as is often done when discussing infinitary logic) as this is necessary to have sensible distributivity laws.
Read more about this topic: Infinitary Logic
Famous quotes containing the words word, axiom and/or choice:
“Your home is regarded as a model home, your life as a model life. But all this splendor, and you along with it ... it’s just as though it were built upon a shifting quagmire. A moment may come, a word can be spoken, and both you and all this splendor will collapse.”
—Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906)
“The writer who neglects punctuation, or mispunctuates, is liable to be misunderstood.... For the want of merely a comma, it often occurs that an axiom appears a paradox, or that a sarcasm is converted into a sermonoid.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)
“I think there is choice possible at any moment to us, as long as we live. But there is no sacrifice. There is a choice, and the rest falls away. Second choice does not exist. Beware of those who talk about sacrifice.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)