Undefined terms

Randall Holmes (holmes@catseye.idbsu.edu)
Thu, 18 May 1995 12:39:59 -0600

I'm giving a presentation to the second QED workshop on ways of handling
undefined terms (terms which should not have values or whose values we
don't care about; things like 1/0 and car(nil) spring to mind). I can
think of a number of approaches in the abstract; I'd like to hear
what is done in actual systems.

In my system, for example (at least in one theory developed under my
system) 1/0 is a real number whose value we don't care about and the
form of the multiplicative inverse axiom is

x*(1/x) = if x = 0 then 0 else 1

Descriptions of approaches taken by different groups would be appreciated!

--Randall Holmes
holmes@math.idbsu.edu