In mathematics and logic, a vacuous truth is a conditional or universal statement (a universal statement that can be converted to a conditional statement) that is true because the antecedent cannot be satisfied.
It is sometimes said that a statement is vacuously true because it does not really say anything. For example, the statement "all cell phones in the room are turned off" will be true when no cell phones are in the room. In this case, the statement "all cell phones in the room are turned on" would also be vacuously true, as would the conjunction of the two: "all cell phones in the room are turned on and turned off", which would otherwise be incoherent and false.
More formally, a relatively well-defined usage refers to a conditional statement (or a universal conditional statement) with a false antecedent. One example of such a statement is "if Tokyo is in France, then the Eiffel Tower is in Bolivia".
Such statements are considered vacuous truths, because the fact that the antecedent is false prevents using the statement to infer anything about the truth value of the consequent. In essence, a conditional statement, that is based on the material...
tateisu :force::r_9a:
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