Logical connective Created 2026-09-28 Updated 2026-10-14
A logical connective forms a compound proposition from component propositions; logical truth and logical falsity are the zero-input cases. Logical negation has one input, while logical conjunction, logical disjunction, and logical implication each have two. In classical propositional logic, these logical connectives are truth-functional: their output value is determined by their input values, as listed in a truth table. This does not characterize every kind of logical connective in every logic. See forall x: Calgary, section 10.1.
Under the Curry-Howard correspondence, Intuitionistic propositional logic propositions are types and proofs are typed terms. Assumptions correspond to typed variables. The logical implication corresponds to the function type, logical conjunction to the product type, logical disjunction to the sum type, logical truth to the unit type, and logical falsity to the empty type.
The rules of natural deduction become term constructors. Implication introduction sends a derivation of from a variable to the abstraction , while implication elimination becomes application . Pairing and projection implement conjunction, and injections with case analysis implement disjunction. Under this correspondence, normalization of proofs is computation by beta reduction in the simply typed lambda calculus.