1,059,464 research outputs found
The accident of logical constants
Work on the nature and scope of formal logic has focused unduly on the distinction between logical and extra-logical vocabulary; which argument forms a logical theory countenances depends not only on its stock of logical terms, but also on its range of grammatical categories and modes of composition. Furthermore, there is a sense in which logical terms are unnecessary. Alexandra Zinke has recently pointed out that propositional logic can be done without logical terms. By defining a logical-term-free language with the full expressive power of first-order logic with identity, I show that this is true of logic more generally. Furthermore, having, in a logical theory, non-trivial valid forms that do not involve logical terms is not merely a technical possibility. As the case of adverbs shows, issues about the range of argument forms logic should countenance can quite naturally arise in such a way that they do not turn on whether we countenance certain terms as logical
Transition Semantics - The Dynamics of Dependence Logic
We examine the relationship between Dependence Logic and game logics. A
variant of Dynamic Game Logic, called Transition Logic, is developed, and we
show that its relationship with Dependence Logic is comparable to the one
between First-Order Logic and Dynamic Game Logic discussed by van Benthem. This
suggests a new perspective on the interpretation of Dependence Logic formulas,
in terms of assertions about reachability in games of im- perfect information
against Nature. We then capitalize on this intuition by developing expressively
equivalent variants of Dependence Logic in which this interpretation is taken
to the foreground
Fixed-parameter tractability, definability, and model checking
In this article, we study parameterized complexity theory from the
perspective of logic, or more specifically, descriptive complexity theory.
We propose to consider parameterized model-checking problems for various
fragments of first-order logic as generic parameterized problems and show how
this approach can be useful in studying both fixed-parameter tractability and
intractability. For example, we establish the equivalence between the
model-checking for existential first-order logic, the homomorphism problem for
relational structures, and the substructure isomorphism problem. Our main
tractability result shows that model-checking for first-order formulas is
fixed-parameter tractable when restricted to a class of input structures with
an excluded minor. On the intractability side, for every t >= 0 we prove an
equivalence between model-checking for first-order formulas with t quantifier
alternations and the parameterized halting problem for alternating Turing
machines with t alternations. We discuss the close connection between this
alternation hierarchy and Downey and Fellows' W-hierarchy.
On a more abstract level, we consider two forms of definability, called Fagin
definability and slicewise definability, that are appropriate for describing
parameterized problems. We give a characterization of the class FPT of all
fixed-parameter tractable problems in terms of slicewise definability in finite
variable least fixed-point logic, which is reminiscent of the Immerman-Vardi
Theorem characterizing the class PTIME in terms of definability in least
fixed-point logic.Comment: To appear in SIAM Journal on Computin
Memoization for Unary Logic Programming: Characterizing PTIME
We give a characterization of deterministic polynomial time computation based
on an algebraic structure called the resolution semiring, whose elements can be
understood as logic programs or sets of rewriting rules over first-order terms.
More precisely, we study the restriction of this framework to terms (and logic
programs, rewriting rules) using only unary symbols. We prove it is complete
for polynomial time computation, using an encoding of pushdown automata. We
then introduce an algebraic counterpart of the memoization technique in order
to show its PTIME soundness. We finally relate our approach and complexity
results to complexity of logic programming. As an application of our
techniques, we show a PTIME-completeness result for a class of logic
programming queries which use only unary function symbols.Comment: Soumis {\`a} LICS 201
Categories for Dynamic Epistemic Logic
The primary goal of this paper is to recast the semantics of modal logic, and
dynamic epistemic logic (DEL) in particular, in category-theoretic terms. We
first review the category of relations and categories of Kripke frames, with
particular emphasis on the duality between relations and adjoint homomorphisms.
Using these categories, we then reformulate the semantics of DEL in a more
categorical and algebraic form. Several virtues of the new formulation will be
demonstrated: The DEL idea of updating a model into another is captured
naturally by the categorical perspective -- which emphasizes a family of
objects and structural relationships among them, as opposed to a single object
and structure on it. Also, the categorical semantics of DEL can be merged
straightforwardly with a standard categorical semantics for first-order logic,
providing a semantics for first-order DEL.Comment: In Proceedings TARK 2017, arXiv:1707.0825
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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