Necessary vs. Sufficient Conditions In Detail

Extra Writeups
Author

Jeff Jacobs

Published

February 13, 2026

Table-Setting I Should Have Done Before HW1: Truth Tables!

Just one (❗️) “primary” axiom required for first-order predicate logic!

But, to make it more digestible, we can define some “helper axioms”:

[Helper Axiom ]
  • A unary operator “\(\neg\)
  • Intersubjective agreement: call it “not”
\(p\) \(\neg p\)
0 1
1 0
[Helper Axiom ]
  • A binary operator “\(\wedge\)
  • Intersubjective agreement: call it “and”
\(p\) \(q\) \(p \wedge q\)
0 0 0
0 1 0
1 0 0
1 1 1

The Single Axiom

[Axiom ] A binary operator “\(\barwedge\)”, defined (for human consumption) s.t. \(a \barwedge b \triangleq \neg(a \wedge b)\), but defined precisely as the binary operator which maps the blue cols into orange col:

\(p\) \(q\) \(p \underset{\small\text{or}}{\vee} q\) \(p \underset{\small\text{xor}}{\otimes} q\) \(p \underset{\small\text{and}}{\wedge} q\) \(p \underset{\small\text{nand}}{\barwedge} q\)
0 0 0 0 0 1
0 1 1 1 0 1
1 0 1 1 0 1
1 1 1 0 1 0

Deriving “Not”

  • Given Axiom , we can derive Axiom as a theorem (meaning, it does not need to be included as an axiom!):

    \[ [\text{Theorem 1}] \; ~ p \barwedge p \text{ satisfies all properties of }\neg p \]

    Therefore, define \(\neg p \triangleq p \barwedge p\)

  • Given Axiom and Theorem 1, we can derive Axiom as a theorem:

    \[ [\text{Theorem 2}] ~ \neg(p \barwedge q) \text{ satisfies all properties of }p \wedge q \]

    Therefore, define \(p \wedge q \triangleq \neg(p \barwedge q)\)

HW1 Clarification: Necessary vs. Sufficient

These are, at root, logical connectors: given “atomic” (non-implicational) logical predicates \(p\) and \(q\), we can form implicational predicates (here “\(\equiv\)” means “will always have the same logical value (T or F) as”):

English Logical Form \(\equiv\) Contrapositive Form If True Then…
“If \(p\) then \(q\) \(p \Rightarrow q\) or \(q \Leftarrow p\) \(\equiv\) \(\neg q \Rightarrow \neg p\) \(p\) sufficient for \(q\)
“If \(q\) then \(p\) \(q \Rightarrow p\) or \(p \Leftarrow q\) \(\equiv\) \(\neg p \Rightarrow \neg q\) \(p\) necessary for \(q\)

The truth table for \(\Rightarrow\) looks like:

\(p\) \(q\) \(p \Rightarrow q\) \(\neg p \vee q\)
0 0 1 1
0 1 1 1
1 0 0 0
1 1 1 1

Which means, finally, we can “plug in” English statements for \(p\) and \(q\):

  • \(p\) = «A law mandating segregation is in force in a polity»
  • \(q\) = «Segregation emerges in the polity»

And evaluate based on \(p\) and \(q\) (board time!)