1,358 research outputs found
Modal Logics Definable by Universal Three-Variable Formulas
We consider the satisfiability problem for modal logic over classes of structures definable by universal first-order formulas with three variables. We exhibit a simple formula for which the problem is undecidable. This improves an earlier result in which nine variables were used. We also show that for classes defined by three-variable, universal Horn formulas the problem is decidable. This subsumes decidability results for many natural modal logics, including T, B, K4, S4, S5
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
Undecidability of the unification and admissibility problems for modal and description logics
We show that the unification problem `is there a substitution instance of a
given formula that is provable in a given logic?' is undecidable for basic
modal logics K and K4 extended with the universal modality. It follows that the
admissibility problem for inference rules is undecidable for these logics as
well. These are the first examples of standard decidable modal logics for which
the unification and admissibility problems are undecidable. We also prove
undecidability of the unification and admissibility problems for K and K4 with
at least two modal operators and nominals (instead of the universal modality),
thereby showing that these problems are undecidable for basic hybrid logics.
Recently, unification has been introduced as an important reasoning service for
description logics. The undecidability proof for K with nominals can be used to
show the undecidability of unification for boolean description logics with
nominals (such as ALCO and SHIQO). The undecidability proof for K with the
universal modality can be used to show that the unification problem relative to
role boxes is undecidable for Boolean description logic with transitive roles,
inverse roles, and role hierarchies (such as SHI and SHIQ)
Modal Logics of Topological Relations
Logical formalisms for reasoning about relations between spatial regions play
a fundamental role in geographical information systems, spatial and constraint
databases, and spatial reasoning in AI. In analogy with Halpern and Shoham's
modal logic of time intervals based on the Allen relations, we introduce a
family of modal logics equipped with eight modal operators that are interpreted
by the Egenhofer-Franzosa (or RCC8) relations between regions in topological
spaces such as the real plane. We investigate the expressive power and
computational complexity of logics obtained in this way. It turns out that our
modal logics have the same expressive power as the two-variable fragment of
first-order logic, but are exponentially less succinct. The complexity ranges
from (undecidable and) recursively enumerable to highly undecidable, where the
recursively enumerable logics are obtained by considering substructures of
structures induced by topological spaces. As our undecidability results also
capture logics based on the real line, they improve upon undecidability results
for interval temporal logics by Halpern and Shoham. We also analyze modal
logics based on the five RCC5 relations, with similar results regarding the
expressive power, but weaker results regarding the complexity
Deciding regular grammar logics with converse through first-order logic
We provide a simple translation of the satisfiability problem for regular
grammar logics with converse into GF2, which is the intersection of the guarded
fragment and the 2-variable fragment of first-order logic. This translation is
theoretically interesting because it translates modal logics with certain frame
conditions into first-order logic, without explicitly expressing the frame
conditions.
A consequence of the translation is that the general satisfiability problem
for regular grammar logics with converse is in EXPTIME. This extends a previous
result of the first author for grammar logics without converse. Using the same
method, we show how some other modal logics can be naturally translated into
GF2, including nominal tense logics and intuitionistic logic.
In our view, the results in this paper show that the natural first-order
fragment corresponding to regular grammar logics is simply GF2 without extra
machinery such as fixed point-operators.Comment: 34 page
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