excluded

In logic, the law of excluded middle (or the principle of excluded middle) states that for any proposition, either that proposition is true or its negation is true. It is one of the so called three laws of thought, along with the law of noncontradiction, and the law of identity. However, no system of logic is built on just these laws, and none of these laws provide inference rules, such as modus ponens or De Morgan's laws.
The law is also known as the law (or principle) of the excluded third, in Latin principium tertii exclusi. Another Latin designation for this law is tertium non datur: "no third [possibility] is given". It is a tautology.
The principle should not be confused with the semantical principle of bivalence, which states that every proposition is either true or false. The principle of bivalence always implies the law of excluded middle, while the converse is not always true. A commonly cited counterexample uses statements unprovable now, but provable in the future to show that the law of excluded middle may apply when the principle of bivalence fails.