Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 March 2014
Generally speaking, it appears correct to say that in a formulation of first order logic in which a large number of connectives are taken as primitive (e.g. ∼, Λ, ∨, ⊃, ∀, ∃ as opposed to ∼, ⊃, ∀, or still more economically, ↓, ∀ proofs within the formal system tend to be smoother and more natural, but the metatheory tends to be that much more elaborate. In [1] we introduced a unifying ‘α, β, γ, δ” notation (which we also used in [2]–[7] and which we briefly review in this paper) which allows us to have our cake and eat it too.