Conditionals and modularity in general logics

In this work in progress, we discuss independence and interpolation and related topics for classical, modal, and non-monotonic logics

The prospects for mathematical logic in the twenty-first century

The four authors present their speculations about the future developments of mathematical logic in the twenty-first century. The areas of recursion theory, proof theory and logic for computer science, model theory, and set theory are discussed independently.Comment: Association for Symbolic Logi

Meaning of temperature in different thermostatistical ensembles

Depending on the exact experimental conditions, the thermodynamic properties of physical systems can be related to one or more thermostatistical ensembles. Here, we survey the notion of thermodynamic temperature in different statistical ensembles, focusing in particular on subtleties that arise when ensembles become non-equivalent. The 'mother' of all ensembles, the microcanonical ensemble, uses entropy and internal energy (the most fundamental, dynamically conserved quantity) to derive temperature as a secondary thermodynamic variable. Over the past century, some confusion has been caused by the fact that several competing microcanonical entropy definitions are used in the literature, most commonly the volume and surface entropies introduced by Gibbs. It can be proved, however, that only the volume entropy satisfies exactly the traditional form of the laws of thermodynamics for a broad class of physical systems, including all standard classical Hamiltonian systems, regardless of their size. This mathematically rigorous fact implies that negative 'absolute' temperatures and Carnot efficiencies $>1$ are not achievable within a standard thermodynamical framework. As an important offspring of microcanonical thermostatistics, we shall briefly consider the canonical ensemble and comment on the validity of the Boltzmann weight factor. We conclude by addressing open mathematical problems that arise for systems with discrete energy spectrum.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figur

Fidel Semantics for Propositional and First-Order Version of the Logic of CG’3

Paraconsistent extensions of 3-valued Gödel logic are studied as tools for knowledge representation and nonmonotonic reasoning. Particularly, Osorio and his collaborators showed that some of these logics can be used to express interesting nonmonotonic semantics. CG’3 is one of these 3-valued logics. In this paper, we introduce Fidel semantics for a certain calculus of CG’3 by means of Fidel structures, named CG’3-structures. These structures are constructed from enriched Boolean algebras with a special family of sets. Moreover, we also show that the most basic CG’3-structures coincide with da Costa–Alves’ bi-valuation semantics; this connection is displayed through a Representation Theorem for CG’3-structures. By contrast, we show that for other paraconsistent logics that allow us to present semantics through Fidel structures, this connection is not held. Finally, Fidel semantics for the first-order version of the logic of CG’3 are presented by means of adapting algebraic tools

Zero-one laws with respect to models of provability logic and two Grzegorczyk logics

It has been shown in the late 1960s that each formula of first-order logic without constants and function symbols obeys a zero-one law: As the number of elements of finite models increases, every formula holds either in almost all or in almost no models of that size. Therefore, many properties of models, such as having an even number of elements, cannot be expressed in the language of first-order logic. Halpern and Kapron proved zero-one laws for classes of models corresponding to the modal logics K, T, S4, and S5 and for frames corresponding to S4 and S5. In this paper, we prove zero-one laws for provability logic and its two siblings Grzegorczyk logic and weak Grzegorczyk logic, with respect to model validity. Moreover, we axiomatize validity in almost all relevant finite models, leading to three different axiom systems

Reasoning about Action: An Argumentation - Theoretic Approach

We present a uniform non-monotonic solution to the problems of reasoning about action on the basis of an argumentation-theoretic approach. Our theory is provably correct relative to a sensible minimisation policy introduced on top of a temporal propositional logic. Sophisticated problem domains can be formalised in our framework. As much attention of researchers in the field has been paid to the traditional and basic problems in reasoning about actions such as the frame, the qualification and the ramification problems, approaches to these problems within our formalisation lie at heart of the expositions presented in this paper