Concluding Truth Value from Universe of Discourse

Question

I have been working on the following problem from Velleman's How to Prove book:

Are these statements true or false? The universe of discourse is the set of all people, and P(x, y) means “x is a parent of y.”

(a) ¬∃x∃y P(x, y)

I tried to solve this in the following steps:

* ¬∃x∃y P(x, y)
* ¬(There exists some x and some y such that x is a parent to y)
* x isn't parent to y

From the Universe of discourse, I conclude that there will be some x who isn't a parent to y and conclude that this statement is True.

But the answer stated here is completely different which states:

It means, There does not exist anyone who is parent of someone. Clearly its False.

Can someone explain the thought process behind this ?

Answer 1

$\neg\exists x\;\exists y\;P(x,y)$ is parsed as $\neg(\exists x(\exists y(P(x,y))))$

Or in English: "There does not exists two people who are parent and child."

However, I know of several such people.

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Remember also that the negation of an existential quantifier, is the universal quantifier of a negation.

$$\neg\exists x\;(Q(x)) \qquad\equiv\qquad \forall x\;(\neg Q(x))$$

Which is to say: "There is no person who is ..." means "All people are not ...". Thus wise:

$$\begin{align} & \quad \neg\exists x\;\exists y\;P(x,y) \\ \equiv & \quad\forall x\; \neg\exists y \;P(x,y) \\ \equiv & \quad\forall x\; \forall y \;\neg P(x,y) \end{align}$$

So our statement also reads: "Every two people are not parent and child." This is true only if there are no exceptions.

Answer 2

$ \exists x \exists y P(x, y) $ would mean "there exists $x$ ( for which ) there exists $y$ such that $x$ is a parent of $y$". Now the negation at the beginning I would think is applicable to the first quantifier. So we may as well bracket it $(\lnot \exists x)$. This means there does not exists $x$. Replace this in our first interpretation and we get, "there does not exist $x$ ( for which ) there exists $y$ such that $x$ is a parent of $y$". In simple English this would mean " there is no $x$ (for which) there is a (corresponding) $y$ such that $x $ is a parent of $y$. And you should understand that this clearly means there is no one with in the world with kids. Which is what the nicer statement in the answer tells you.