192,258 research outputs found
On the Syntax of Logic and Set Theory
We introduce an extension of the propositional calculus to include abstracts
of predicates and quantifiers, employing a single rule along with a novel
comprehension schema and a principle of extensionality, which are substituted
for the Bernays postulates for quantifiers and the comprehension schemata of ZF
and other set theories. We prove that it is consistent in any finite Boolean
subset lattice. We investigate the antinomies of Russell, Cantor, Burali-Forti,
and others, and discuss the relationship of the system to other set theoretic
systems ZF, NBG, and NF. We discuss two methods of axiomatizing higher order
quantification and abstraction, and then very briefly discuss the application
of one of these methods to areas of mathematics outside of logic.Comment: 34 pages, accepted, to appear in the Review of Symbolic Logi
An expressive completeness theorem for coalgebraic modal mu-calculi
Generalizing standard monadic second-order logic for Kripke models, we
introduce monadic second-order logic interpreted over coalgebras for an
arbitrary set functor. We then consider invariance under behavioral equivalence
of MSO-formulas. More specifically, we investigate whether the coalgebraic
mu-calculus is the bisimulation-invariant fragment of the monadic second-order
language for a given functor. Using automatatheoretic techniques and building
on recent results by the third author, we show that in order to provide such a
characterization result it suffices to find what we call an adequate uniform
construction for the coalgebraic type functor. As direct applications of this
result we obtain a partly new proof of the Janin-Walukiewicz Theorem for the
modal mu-calculus, avoiding the use of syntactic normal forms, and bisimulation
invariance results for the bag functor (graded modal logic) and all exponential
polynomial functors (including the "game functor"). As a more involved
application, involving additional non-trivial ideas, we also derive a
characterization theorem for the monotone modal mu-calculus, with respect to a
natural monadic second-order language for monotone neighborhood models.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1501.0721
The Axiomatic Structure of Empirical Content
In this paper, we provide a formal framework for studying the empirical content of a given theory. We define the falsifiable closure of a theory to be the least weakening of the theory that makes only falsifiable claims. The falsifiable closure is our notion of empirical content. We prove that the empirical content of a theory can be exactly captured by a certain kind of axiomatization, one that uses axioms which are universal negations of conjunctions of atomic formulas. The falsifiable closure operator has the structure of a topological closure, which has implications, for example, for the behavior of joint vis a vis single hypotheses.
The ideas here are useful for understanding theories whose empirical content is well-understood (for example, we apply our framework to revealed preference theory, and Afriat's theorem), but they can also be applied to theories with no known axiomatization. We present an application to the theory of multiple selves, with a fixed finite set of selves and where selves are aggregated according to a neutral rule satisfying independence of irrelevant alternatives. We show that multiple selves theories are fully falsifiable, in the sense that they are equivalent to their empirical content
An Atypical Survey of Typical-Case Heuristic Algorithms
Heuristic approaches often do so well that they seem to pretty much always
give the right answer. How close can heuristic algorithms get to always giving
the right answer, without inducing seismic complexity-theoretic consequences?
This article first discusses how a series of results by Berman, Buhrman,
Hartmanis, Homer, Longpr\'{e}, Ogiwara, Sch\"{o}ening, and Watanabe, from the
early 1970s through the early 1990s, explicitly or implicitly limited how well
heuristic algorithms can do on NP-hard problems. In particular, many desirable
levels of heuristic success cannot be obtained unless severe, highly unlikely
complexity class collapses occur. Second, we survey work initiated by Goldreich
and Wigderson, who showed how under plausible assumptions deterministic
heuristics for randomized computation can achieve a very high frequency of
correctness. Finally, we consider formal ways in which theory can help explain
the effectiveness of heuristics that solve NP-hard problems in practice.Comment: This article is currently scheduled to appear in the December 2012
issue of SIGACT New
From IF to BI: a tale of dependence and separation
We take a fresh look at the logics of informational dependence and
independence of Hintikka and Sandu and Vaananen, and their compositional
semantics due to Hodges. We show how Hodges' semantics can be seen as a special
case of a general construction, which provides a context for a useful
completeness theorem with respect to a wider class of models. We shed some new
light on each aspect of the logic. We show that the natural propositional logic
carried by the semantics is the logic of Bunched Implications due to Pym and
O'Hearn, which combines intuitionistic and multiplicative connectives. This
introduces several new connectives not previously considered in logics of
informational dependence, but which we show play a very natural role, most
notably intuitionistic implication. As regards the quantifiers, we show that
their interpretation in the Hodges semantics is forced, in that they are the
image under the general construction of the usual Tarski semantics; this
implies that they are adjoints to substitution, and hence uniquely determined.
As for the dependence predicate, we show that this is definable from a simpler
predicate, of constancy or dependence on nothing. This makes essential use of
the intuitionistic implication. The Armstrong axioms for functional dependence
are then recovered as a standard set of axioms for intuitionistic implication.
We also prove a full abstraction result in the style of Hodges, in which the
intuitionistic implication plays a very natural r\^ole.Comment: 28 pages, journal versio
A herbrandized functional interpretation of classical first-order logic
We introduce a new typed combinatory calculus with a type constructor that, to each type σ, associates the star type σ^∗ of the nonempty finite subsets of elements of type σ. We prove that this calculus enjoys the properties of strong normalization and confluence. With the aid of this star combinatory calculus, we define a functional interpretation of first-order predicate logic and prove a corresponding soundness theorem. It is seen that each theorem of classical first-order logic is connected with certain formulas which are tautological in character. As a corollary, we reprove Herbrand’s theorem on the extraction of terms from classically provable existential statements.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
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