Three-valued logic

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In logic, a three-valued logic (also trinary logic, trivalent, ternary, or trilean,^[1] sometimes abbreviated 3VL) is any of several many-valued logic systems in which there are three truth values indicating true, false, and some third value. This is contrasted with the more commonly known bivalent logics (such as classical sentential or Boolean logic) which provide only for true and false.

Emil Leon Post is credited with first introducing additional logical truth degrees in his 1921 theory of elementary propositions.^[2] The conceptual form and basic ideas of three-valued logic were initially published by Jan Łukasiewicz and Clarence Irving Lewis. These were then re-formulated by Grigore Constantin Moisil in an axiomatic algebraic form, and also extended to n-valued logics in 1945.