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While going through a lot of notes online on propositional logic, I've come to the conclusion that people generally refer to the $\neg$ (negation) operator as a connective.

However, strictly speaking, I think that a connective is any operator that connects two propositions; and by that means the negation operator is not a connective.

So is it technically wrong to say that the negation operator is a connective or is it correct?

coderboy
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1 Answers1

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While the etymology for "connective" does suggest two inputs, the term is used more broadly in this technical context: negation is considered a connective despite having a single input, and higer-arity connectives are also considered (see e.g. here).

This happens quite frequently in (and outside as well) mathematics; ultimately, you just need to accept the standard usage, even if it's somewhat (or even extremely) odd.

Noah Schweber
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