The Scientific World Journal

Volume 2014 (2014), Article ID 197403, 7 pages

http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/197403

Research Article

Vague Congruences and Quotient Lattice Implication Algebras

Xiaoyan Qin,1,2 Yi Liu,1,3 and Yang Xu¹

¹Intelligent Control Development Center, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, Sichuan 610031, China

²College of Mathematics and Computer Science, Shanxi Normal University, Linfen, Shanxi 041004, China

³Key Laboratory of Numerical Simulation, Sichuan Provincial College, Neijiang Normal University, Neijiang, Sichuan 641000, China

Received 24 April 2014; Accepted 24 June 2014; Published 14 July 2014

Academic Editor: Young B. Jun

Copyright © 2014 Xiaoyan Qin et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract.

The aim of this paper is to further develop the congruence theory on lattice implication algebras. Firstly, we introduce the notions of vague similarity relations based on vague relations and vague congruence relations. Secondly, the equivalent characterizations of vague congruence relations are investigated. Thirdly, the relation between the set of vague filters and the set of vague congruences is studied. Finally, we construct a new lattice implication algebra induced by a vague congruence, and the homomorphism theorem is given.

1. Introduction

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a newly developed and highly comprehensive frontier science with rapid development, and it mainly studies how to simulate human intelligence behavior by machine. Intelligent information processing is an important direction in the field of AI. Classical mathematical logic is enough to deal with reasoning in traditional mathematical theory, while, in the real world, there are large numbers of problems with uncertainties. To simulate human intelligence behavior better, uncertainty reasoning becomes a key part of computational science and artificial intelligence, and its rationality should be based on foundation of a kind of scientific logic, which is called nonclassical logic [1–3]. Therefore, nonclassical logic has become a considerable formal tool for computer science and artificial intelligence to deal with fuzzy information and uncertain information. Many-valued logic is an extension and development of classical logic and has always been a crucial direction in nonclassical logic.

As an important many-valued logic, lattice-valued logic [4] has two prominent roles. One is to extend the chain-type truth-valued field of the current logics to some relatively general lattices. The other is that the incompletely comparable property of truth value characterized by the general lattice can more effectively reflect the uncertainty of human being’s thinking, judging, and decision. Hence, lattice-valued logic has become an important research field and strongly influenced the development of algebraic logic, computer science, and artificial intelligent technology. In order to provide a reliable logical foundation for uncertain information processing theory, especially for the fuzziness and the incomparability in uncertain information reasoning, Xu [5] combined algebraic lattice and implication algebra, proposed the concept of lattice implication algebras (LIAs for short), and discussed some properties. Since then, this logical algebra has been extensively investigated by several researchers [4–14].

In 1965, Zadeh introduced the concept of fuzzy set [15]. So far, this idea has been applied to other algebraic structures such as groups, semigroups, rings, modules, vector spaces, and topologies and widely used in many fields. Meanwhile, the deficiency of fuzzy sets is also attracting the researchers’ attention. For example, a fuzzy set is a single function, and it cannot express the evidence of supporting and opposing. For this reason, the concept of vague set [16] was introduced in 1993 by Gau and Buehrer. In a vague set , there are two membership functions: a truth membership function and a false membership function , where is a lower bound of the grade of membership of derived from the “evidence for ” and is a lower bound on the negation of derived from the “evidence against ” and . Thus, the grade of membership in a vague set is a subinterval of . The idea of vague sets is an extension of fuzzy sets so that the membership of every element can be divided into two aspects including supporting and opposing. In fact, the idea of vague set is the same with the idea of intuitionistic fuzzy set [17]; so, the vague set is equivalent to intuitionistic fuzzy set.

With the development of vague set theory, some structures of algebras corresponding to vague set have been studied. Biswas [18] initiated the study of vague algebras by studying vague groups. Eswarlal [19] studied the vague ideals and normal vague ideals in semirings. Kham et al. [20] studied the vague relation and its properties, and moreover intuitionistic fuzzy filters and intuitionistic fuzzy congruences in a residuated lattice were researched [10, 13, 21–24]. However, it is well known that lattice implication algebra is a special kind of residuated lattice; so, lattice implication algebras have some special properties which are not possessed by a general residuated lattice. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the vague congruence relation in a lattice implication algebra. Moreover, quotient algebras are a basic tool for exploring the structures of algebras. There are close correlations among filters, congruences, and quotient algebras.

In this paper, we introduce the concept of the vague congruence relation in the lattice implication algebra. In Section 2, we recall some definitions and theorems which will be used in later sections of this paper. In Section 3, we propose the concepts of vague similarity relation based on vague relation and vague congruence relations, and furthermore some properties and equivalent characterizations of vague congruence relation are investigated. Moreover, we show that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the set of all vague filters and all vague congruences of a lattice implication algebra. In Section 4, we construct a new lattice implication algebra induced by vague congruences, and finally the homomorphism theorem is given.

2. Preliminaries

Definition 1 (see [5]). Let be a bounded lattice with an order-reversing involution , the greatest element and the smallest element , and let be a mapping. is called a lattice implication algebra if the following conditions hold for any .

).().().() implies .().().().

In this paper, denote as a lattice implication algebra .

In the following, we will list some basic properties of lattice implication algebras, and they are useful for our subsequent work.

Theorem 2 (see [4]). Let be a lattice implication algebra. Then, for any , the following conclusions hold.

(1)If , then .(2) and .(3) and .(4).(5).(6)If , then and .(7) if and only if .(8).(9) if and only if .(10) if and only if .

Definition 3 (see [12]). A nonempty subset of a lattice implication algebra is called a filter of if it satisfies the following.

(F1).(F2).

Definition 4 (see [16]). A vague set in the universe of discourse is characterized by two membership functions given by

(1)a truth membership function ,(2)a false membership function ,

where is a lower bound of the grade of membership of derived from the “evidence for ” and is a lower bound on the negation of derived from the “evidence against ” and . Thus, the grade of membership of in the vague set is bounded by a subinterval of . The vague set is written as follows:

where the interval is called the value of in the vague set and denoted by .

Definition 5 (see [16]). A Vague set is contained in the other vague set , if and only if ; that is, and for any .

Definition 6 (see [16]). Let be a vague set of with the truth membership function and the false membership function . For any , the -cut of the vague set is a crisp subset of the set by

Obviously, .

Definition 7 (see [16]). Let be a vague set of with the truth membership function and the false membership function . For any , the -cut of the vague set is a crisp subset .

Let be a vague set of , ; and if , then and . Equivalently, we can define the -cut of , .

Let and be two vague sets of ; then, if and only if for any .

Let denote the family of all closed subintervals of . If and are two elements of , we call if and . We define the term to mean the maximum of two intervals as follows:

Similarly, we can define the term of any two intervals.

Definition 8 (see [20]). Let and be two universes. A vague relation of the universe with the universe is a vague set of the Cartesian product .

Definition 9 (see [20]). Let and be two universes. A vague subset of discourse is characterized by two membership functions given by the following:

(1)a truth membership function ,(2)a false membership function ,

where is a lower bound of the grade of membership of derived from the “evidence for ” and is a lower bound on the negation of derived from the “evidence against ” and . Thus, the grade of membership of in the vague set is bounded by a subinterval of . The vague relation is written as follows:

where the interval is called the value of in the vague relation and denoted by .

3. Equivalent Characterizations of Vague Congruence Relation

From Definitions 4 and 8, we can obtain the equivalent definition of vague relation.

Definition 10. Let be nonempty universe; the vague relation on is called vague similarity relation if satisfies the following conditions:

(1), (vague reflexivity);(2), (vague symmetric);(3), (vague transitivity).

Remark 11. For the vague transitivity,

Definition 12. Let be a vague relation on , and , where and . If holds for any , then we call the set is -level relation of .

From Definition 12, any level relation of vague relation on is a relation on , whose characteristic function is as follows:

Theorem 13. Let be a vague relation on universe ; then, is vague similarity relation if and only if is an equivalent relation on , where is a close subinterval of .

Definition 14. Let be a vague relation on . is said to be a vague congruence relation on , if

(1) is a vague similarity relation on ;(2) for any .

Let be a vague relation on , for all close subintervals ; the -level relation and strong -level subset of , respectively, are defined as follows:

Definition 15. Let be a vague relation on nonempty set . satisfies the property if, for every subset of , there exists such that .

Lemma 16. Let be a vague relation on ; then, and , where .

Proof. Let be a vague relation on , ; we have . .

Theorem 17. Let be a vague relation on that satisfies the property. Then, the following statements are equivalent:

(1) is a vague similarity relation on ;(2) is an equivalence relation on , for all ;(3) is an equivalence relation on , for all .

Proof. () It can be easily proved.

() Let , for all . It follows by Lemma 16 that there exist and such that . Since is an equivalent relation, is reflexive; that is, . It follows that is reflexive. Similarly, we can prove is symmetric.

Now, we need to prove is transitive. Suppose , ; then, there exist and , such that , . Taking , then and . Therefore, , . By (2), it follows that is an equivalent relation, then . Hence, is transitive. And so is an equivalence relation on , for all .

() Let . Since satisfies property, then there exists such that , which implies that ; of course, for any and . Therefore, , and so . We have . Therefore, which shows is reflexive. Similarly, we can show that is symmetric. Now, we show is transitive. Let , for any and some ; this implies that , . Therefore, . By Lemma 16, we have for any ; it follows from (3) that for any . Hence, ; so, (1) holds.

Theorem 18. Let be a vague relation on that satisfies the property. Then, the following statements are equivalent:

(1) is a vague congruence relation on ;(2) is a congruence relation on , for all ;(3) is a congruence relation on , for all .

Proof. Let , for all . Since is a vague congruence relation , then is an equivalence relation. Let ; then, . For any , since is a vague congruence relation on , then . That is, . Hence, is a congruence, for all .

Let , for . By Theorem 13, we know that is an equivalence relation on . Let ; then there exist and such that by Lemma 16. Since is a congruence relation on , then . That is, . Hence, is a congruence on for .

We know that is a vague similarity relation on from Lemma 16.

Suppose that and , then by Lemma 16. Since is a congruence relation on , then . Thus, . That is, . Hence, is a vague congruence relation on .

4. Quotient LIAs and Homomorphism Theorem

Let be a vague similarity relation on . For each , we define a vague subset of , where . for all .

Proposition 19. Let be a vague congruence on ; then, is a vague filter of .

Proposition 20. Let be a vague congruence on . For any , we have

Proof. Let ; then, . Since is a vague congruence on , then

Conversely, assume . For any , since , then . Similarly, we have . Hence, , and so .

Definition 21. Let be a vague congruence on a lattice implication algebra and let . The vague subset of is called a vague congruence class of containing .

Denote

which is the set of vague congruence classes of w.r.t. .

In , we define the operations as follows:

Proposition 22. Let be a lattice implication algebra. The operations on are well defined.

Proof. Suppose that and . Then, we have that by Proposition 20.

By Theorem 18, we have , . Obviously, , . Then, , .

Hence, by Proposition 20. By definition of the operation on , we have .

Hence, the operation is well defined.

Since

then . Obviously, . Hence, . That is, .

By Proposition 20 and the definition of the operation on , we have . That is, is well defined.

Similar to (2).

Since , then . As , so . By the definition of , we have .

Hence, the is well defined.

Theorem 23. Let be a vague congruence on a lattice implication algebra . Then, is a lattice implication algebra.

Proof. By Proposition 22, we know that the operations on are well defined.

First, we prove that is a complemented lattice with universal bounds , .

In fact, for the operation , there exists . That means the law of commutativity for holds. Similarly, the associative and idempotent laws hold. Furthermore, we can get the commutative, associative, and idempotent laws for and the absorptive law for and . Hence, is a lattice with the partial order as follows:

If , then . Hence, ; that is, . Thus, . Moreover, because , then is an order-reversing involution on . The universal bounds , .

Sum up the above, is a complemented lattice.

Second, we need to prove ()–(), , hold for . Here, we only prove ; the others can be proved similarly. In fact, there exists

This means () holds.

Hence, is a lattice implication algebra.

Proposition 24. Let be a vague congruence relation on a lattice implication algebra . The mapping

defined by, for ,

is a lattice implication homomorphism.

Proof. Obviously, is well defined.

For any , . So, is an implication homomorphism. As , is a lattice implication homomorphism.

Lemma 25. Let be a vague filter of and let be a vague congruence relation induced by . Then, if and only if and .

Proof. Let ; we have , and so

Hence,

It follows that

Conversely, suppose that .

For any ,

Similarly, we can show that . Therefore, ; hence, .

Theorem 26. Let be a vague filter of . Define

Then, is a congruence relation on .

Proof. The proof can be completed easily from Lemma 25.

Theorem 27. Let be a vague filter of and let be the corresponding quotient algebra. Then, the map defined by , for any , is a lattice implication homomorphism and -, where -.

Proof. The first result is obvious from Proposition 24. We only need to prove the second result, that is,

In fact,

Corollary 28. Let be a vague filter of ; then, .

5. Conclusion

Congruence theory plays a very important role in the research of a logic algebra, through which we can obtain much information such as the internal structure and homomorphism image of the logic algebra and furthermore induce some new algebra with more simple structure. The aim of this paper is to develop the congruence relation on lattice implication algebras. First, the concept of vague similarity relation is introduced based on vague relation, and the concept of vague congruence relations is proposed, and properties and equivalent characterizations of vague congruence relation are investigated. Secondly, the relation between the set of vague filters and the set of vague congruences is studied. Finally, we construct a new lattice implication algebra induced by vague congruences, and the homomorphism theorem is given. The methods in this paper can be used in -algebras, BL-algebras, MTL-algebras, and so forth. Meanwhile, we hope that it will be of great use to provide theoretical foundation to design intelligent information processing systems.

Conflict of Interests

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interests regarding the publication of this paper.

Acknowledgments

This work is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant no. 61175055), Sichuan Key Technology Research and Development Program (Grant no. 2011FZ0051), the Speciality Comprehensive Reform of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics of Ministry of Education (ZG0464), the Speciality Comprehensive Reform of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics of Ministry of Education (01249), the Scientific Research Project of Department of Education of Sichuan Province (14ZA0245), and the Scientific Research Project of Neijiang Normal University (13ZB05).

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