Turnstile (symbol)

In mathematical logic and computer science the symbol ⊢ () has taken the name turnstile because of its resemblance to a typical turnstile if viewed from above. It is also referred to as tee and is often read as "yields", "proves", "satisfies" or "entails". The turnstile represents a binary relation. It has several different interpretations in different contexts: In epistemology, Per Martin-Löf (1996) analyzes the symbol thus: "...[T]he combination of Frege's Urteilsstrich, judgement stroke [ | ], and Inhaltsstrich, content stroke [—], came to be called the assertion sign." Frege's notation for a judgement of some content A can then be read I know A is true. In the same vein, a conditional assertion can be read as: From P, I know that Q In metalogic, the study of formal languages; the turnstile represents syntactic consequence (or "derivability"). This is to say, that it shows that one string can be derived from another in a single step, according to the transformation rules (i.e. the syntax) of some given formal system. As such, the expression means that Q is derivable from P in the system. Consistent with its use for derivability, a "⊢" followed by an expression without anything preceding it denotes a theorem, which is to say that the expression can be derived from the rules using an empty set of axioms. As such, the expression means that Q is a theorem in the system. In proof theory, the turnstile is used to denote "provability" or "derivability". For example, if T is a formal theory and S is a particular sentence in the language of the theory then means that S is provable from T. This usage is demonstrated in the article on propositional calculus. The syntactic consequence of provability should be contrasted to semantic consequence, denoted by the double turnstile symbol . One says that is a semantic consequence of , or , when all possible valuations in which is true, is also true. For propositional logic, it may be shown that semantic consequence and derivability are equivalent to one-another.