A tautology is a statement which is always true. What is the name for a statement which is always false? Is it correct that a statement is either tautology, the false counterpart of tautology, or contingent? A tautology is not a statement that is always true. In such a case,1> 0 would be a tautology, but it is not. A tautology is a logical structure that is true just by its logical form, not by its meaning, like in the previous example. So, a=a is true because of the logical structure, not because of the value of a. The opposite would be a statement that is false due to its structure. The closest form to that is a contradiction in the structure, which has not a name as such. The termcontradictionmight cover it, though. I believe the false counterpart for a tautology is acontradiction. When using truth tables to investigate statements, if the outcome is always true, the statement is a tautology. If it's always false, it's a contradiction.If it's a mixture of both, then it's neither a tautology nor a contradiction. While the answer has been given, it might help to think in terms truth tables.In some truth table, if a proposition always evaluates to true given every possible entry, you have a tautology. Contradictions arise when the table always evaluates to false, and tables that present with a mix of true and false are contingent propositions. Contingent propositions give rise to another flavor of logic calledmodal logicwhere necessary and possible operators are introduced in statements.