2,442 research outputs found
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
Model companions of theories with an automorphism
For a theory in is the theory of the models of with an
automorphism . If is an unstable model complete theory without the
independence property, then has no model companion. If is an
unstable model complete theory and has the amalgamation property,
then has no model companion. If is model complete and has the
fcp, then has no model completion
Cores of Countably Categorical Structures
A relational structure is a core, if all its endomorphisms are embeddings.
This notion is important for computational complexity classification of
constraint satisfaction problems. It is a fundamental fact that every finite
structure has a core, i.e., has an endomorphism such that the structure induced
by its image is a core; moreover, the core is unique up to isomorphism. Weprove
that every \omega -categorical structure has a core. Moreover, every
\omega-categorical structure is homomorphically equivalent to a model-complete
core, which is unique up to isomorphism, and which is finite or \omega
-categorical. We discuss consequences for constraint satisfaction with \omega
-categorical templates
On the Scope of the Universal-Algebraic Approach to Constraint Satisfaction
The universal-algebraic approach has proved a powerful tool in the study of
the complexity of CSPs. This approach has previously been applied to the study
of CSPs with finite or (infinite) omega-categorical templates, and relies on
two facts. The first is that in finite or omega-categorical structures A, a
relation is primitive positive definable if and only if it is preserved by the
polymorphisms of A. The second is that every finite or omega-categorical
structure is homomorphically equivalent to a core structure. In this paper, we
present generalizations of these facts to infinite structures that are not
necessarily omega-categorical. (This abstract has been severely curtailed by
the space constraints of arXiv -- please read the full abstract in the
article.) Finally, we present applications of our general results to the
description and analysis of the complexity of CSPs. In particular, we give
general hardness criteria based on the absence of polymorphisms that depend on
more than one argument, and we present a polymorphism-based description of
those CSPs that are first-order definable (and therefore can be solved in
polynomial time).Comment: Extended abstract appeared at 25th Symposium on Logic in Computer
Science (LICS 2010). This version will appear in the LMCS special issue
associated with LICS 201
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