Universal and Existential Quantifiers of First-Order Logic

scala functional-programming logic
More Than Five picture More Than Five · Apr 4, 2013 · Viewed 9.3k times · Source

I am taking a Scala programming course. At one point the instructor said:

Functions blah and bladdy are the universal and existential quantifiers of first-order logic.

Could someone translate "universal and existential quantifiers of first-order logic" into English please?

Answer

theJollySin picture theJollySin · Apr 4, 2013

That sentence is full of jargon. You can find a description of universal and existential logical quantifiers here.

  1. A Universal Quantifier is a logical statement that applies to all elements of a set.
  2. An Existential Quantifier is a logical statement that applies to at least one element of a set.

You can also look here for a quick description of first-order logic. The term is meant to separate first-order from higher-order logic:

  1. First-order logical statements are the usual ones; they act on members of a set.
  2. Higher-order logical statements act on other logical statements; think of them as meta-logic.

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