De Morgan’s Laws

Author

John Robin Inston

Published

September 25, 2026

1 De Morgan’s Laws

De Morgan’s Laws are fundamental results in logic and set theory formalizing the intuitive relationship between negation (or complements in set theory) and the concepts of conjunction and disjunction.

  1. Law for negation of a conjunction: \(\sim(𝑝∧𝑞)≡~𝑝∨\sim 𝑞\);
  2. Law for the negation of a disjunction: \(\sim(𝑝∨𝑞)≡~𝑝∧\sim𝑞\);
  3. Negation of a conditional: \(\sim(𝑝→𝑞)≡𝑝∧\sim𝑞\);
  4. Writing conditional as a disjunction: \(𝑝→𝑞≡\sim𝑝∨𝑞\).

We can write equivalent laws in set theoretic notation: \[ \left( \bigcup_{n}A_{n} \right)^c=\bigcap_{n}A_{n}^c\quad \& \quad \left( \bigcap_{n}A_{n} \right)^c=\bigcup_{n}A_{n}^c. \] Proof: For the first law we see quickly that \[ \omega \in(\cup_{n}A_{n})^c\iff \omega \not\in \cup_{n}A_{n}\iff \omega \not\in A_{n},~\forall n\iff \omega \in A_{n}^c,~\forall n\iff \omega \in \cap_{n}A_{n}^c. \] For the second law similarly we have \[ \omega \in(\cap_{n}A_{n})^c \iff \omega \not\in \cap_{n}A_{n}\iff \exists n~s.t.~\omega \not\in A_{n}\iff \exists n~s.t.~\omega \in A_{n}^c \iff \omega \in \cup_{n}A_{n}^c.\tag*{$\square$ } \]

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