Idempotency of entailment

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Idempotency of entailment is a property of logical systems that states that one may derive the same consequences from many instances of a hypothesis as from just one. This property can be captured by a structural rule called contraction , and in such systems one may say that entailment is idempotent if and only if contraction is an admissible rule.

Rule of contraction: from

A,C,C → B

is derived

A,C → B.

Or in sequent calculus notation,

{\frac {\Gamma ,C,C\vdash B}{\Gamma ,C\vdash B}}

{\displaystyle {\frac {\Gamma ,C,C\vdash B}{\Gamma ,C\vdash B}}}

In linear and affine logic, entailment is not idempotent.

See also