if your looking for whether it was set then use issset.
but when you use a variable you're using it, you're doing a boolean check. this means that it has to be true (normally 1 with false being 0)
without seeing more of the code i can't really help because i don't know what's going on. what i can tell from that is that you're trying to boolean and declare at the same time, which seems to be the only thing php wont let one do