4,195 research outputs found
Changing a semantics: opportunism or courage?
The generalized models for higher-order logics introduced by Leon Henkin, and
their multiple offspring over the years, have become a standard tool in many
areas of logic. Even so, discussion has persisted about their technical status,
and perhaps even their conceptual legitimacy. This paper gives a systematic
view of generalized model techniques, discusses what they mean in mathematical
and philosophical terms, and presents a few technical themes and results about
their role in algebraic representation, calibrating provability, lowering
complexity, understanding fixed-point logics, and achieving set-theoretic
absoluteness. We also show how thinking about Henkin's approach to semantics of
logical systems in this generality can yield new results, dispelling the
impression of adhocness. This paper is dedicated to Leon Henkin, a deep
logician who has changed the way we all work, while also being an always open,
modest, and encouraging colleague and friend.Comment: 27 pages. To appear in: The life and work of Leon Henkin: Essays on
his contributions (Studies in Universal Logic) eds: Manzano, M., Sain, I. and
Alonso, E., 201
Complete Additivity and Modal Incompleteness
In this paper, we tell a story about incompleteness in modal logic. The story
weaves together a paper of van Benthem, `Syntactic aspects of modal
incompleteness theorems,' and a longstanding open question: whether every
normal modal logic can be characterized by a class of completely additive modal
algebras, or as we call them, V-BAOs. Using a first-order reformulation of the
property of complete additivity, we prove that the modal logic that starred in
van Benthem's paper resolves the open question in the negative. In addition,
for the case of bimodal logic, we show that there is a naturally occurring
logic that is incomplete with respect to V-BAOs, namely the provability logic
GLB. We also show that even logics that are unsound with respect to such
algebras do not have to be more complex than the classical propositional
calculus. On the other hand, we observe that it is undecidable whether a
syntactically defined logic is V-complete. After these results, we generalize
the Blok Dichotomy to degrees of V-incompleteness. In the end, we return to van
Benthem's theme of syntactic aspects of modal incompleteness
Automated Synthesis of Tableau Calculi
This paper presents a method for synthesising sound and complete tableau
calculi. Given a specification of the formal semantics of a logic, the method
generates a set of tableau inference rules that can then be used to reason
within the logic. The method guarantees that the generated rules form a
calculus which is sound and constructively complete. If the logic can be shown
to admit finite filtration with respect to a well-defined first-order semantics
then adding a general blocking mechanism provides a terminating tableau
calculus. The process of generating tableau rules can be completely automated
and produces, together with the blocking mechanism, an automated procedure for
generating tableau decision procedures. For illustration we show the
workability of the approach for a description logic with transitive roles and
propositional intuitionistic logic.Comment: 32 page
Lewis meets Brouwer: constructive strict implication
C. I. Lewis invented modern modal logic as a theory of "strict implication".
Over the classical propositional calculus one can as well work with the unary
box connective. Intuitionistically, however, the strict implication has greater
expressive power than the box and allows to make distinctions invisible in the
ordinary syntax. In particular, the logic determined by the most popular
semantics of intuitionistic K becomes a proper extension of the minimal normal
logic of the binary connective. Even an extension of this minimal logic with
the "strength" axiom, classically near-trivial, preserves the distinction
between the binary and the unary setting. In fact, this distinction and the
strong constructive strict implication itself has been also discovered by the
functional programming community in their study of "arrows" as contrasted with
"idioms". Our particular focus is on arithmetical interpretations of the
intuitionistic strict implication in terms of preservativity in extensions of
Heyting's Arithmetic.Comment: Our invited contribution to the collection "L.E.J. Brouwer, 50 years
later
Pointwise intersection in neighbourhood modal logic
We study the logic of neighbourhood models with pointwise intersection, as a
means to characterize multi-modal logics. Pointwise intersection takes us from
a set of neighbourhood sets (one for each member of a set
, used to interpret the modality ) to a new neighbourhood set
, which in turn allows us to interpret the operator .
Here, is in the neighbourhood for if and only if equals the
intersection of some . We show that the
notion of pointwise intersection has various applications in epistemic and
doxastic logic, deontic logic, coalition logic, and evidence logic. We then
establish sound and strongly complete axiomatizations for the weakest logic
characterized by pointwise intersection and for a number of variants, using a
new and generally applicable technique for canonical model construction.Comment: Submitted to Advances in Modal Logic 201
Constructive Provability Logic
We present constructive provability logic, an intuitionstic modal logic that
validates the L\"ob rule of G\"odel and L\"ob's provability logic by permitting
logical reflection over provability. Two distinct variants of this logic, CPL
and CPL*, are presented in natural deduction and sequent calculus forms which
are then shown to be equivalent. In addition, we discuss the use of
constructive provability logic to justify stratified negation in logic
programming within an intuitionstic and structural proof theory.Comment: Extended version of IMLA 2011 submission of the same titl
- …