Introduction to Philosophy/Logic/Nand and Nor

Introduction to Philosophy > Logic > Nand and Nor

Our connectives ¬, ∧, ∨, →, fit easily with our every day way of reasoning about things. For the reductionists out there, it turns out that we can get a single connective to do all the work of our familiar connectives. Indeed there are two ways we can do this.

The first way is using joint denial, known in electronics circles as nand. Its truth table is as follows:

  A B Output
  0 0    1
  0 1    1
  1 0    1
  1 1    0

We can see that ¬p is the same as p nand p. etc. ...

The other candidate is alternative denial or nor.

Electronics people like nand and nor. I think it is because it gives them a one-size-fits-all chip, which they can connect up how they like to get the other connectives.

Is there are an advanced civilization on some distant planet that does all its reasoning using nand or nor? If so, would cause and effect ever have become a big issue for them?