Showing a statement of First-Order Logic is neither a validity nor a contradiction.

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Working on P.D. Magnus. forallX: an Introduction to Formal Logic (pp. 267, exercise A. 2), asks:

Show that each of the following is neither a validity nor a contradiction:

$\exists x T(x,h)$

Refute validity:

I am going to choose this interpretation:

Domain: cats, ants

$T(x,y)$: x is heavier than y.

h: cats, a: ants

No element $d$ belonging to the domain satisfies $T(b,h)$ in interpretation $\mathbf{I}[b \setminus d]$ because

$T(h,h)$ is false, and $T(a,h)$ is false.

Is this proof correct ?

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As noted in the comments, there's a bit of confusion here - you seem to be interpreting $h$ as a set (namely, of all cats). However, you have the right idea: consider a domain consisting of one cat (who we name "$h$") and one ant (to whom we don't even give a specific name, nobody names ants), and interpret $T$ as "is heavier than." Then:

  • $h$ is not heavier than itself.

  • The only other element of our universe - the sadly-nameless ant - is not heavier than $h$.

So in this context, $\exists x(T(x,h))$ is indeed false. But note the shift from sets to individuals.

(Actually, we didn't even need an ant at all - just consider the domain consisting of a single cat, which isn't heavier than itself. Ants are really unnecessary in general, too.)


For showing that $\exists x(T(x,h))$ isn't a contradiction either, a similar idea should be employed - in fact, there's a couple ways to very slightly tweak the ideas above to get an answer here.

(It's separately worth giving purely mathematical example models: e.g. to show that $\exists x(T(x,y))$ is not valid, we could always work with the set $\{0\}$ and interpret $T$ as "is less than.")