Explicit Evidence Systems with Common Knowledge

Justification logics are epistemic logics that explicitly include justifications for the agents' knowledge. We develop a multi-agent justification logic with evidence terms for individual agents as well as for common knowledge. We define a Kripke-style semantics that is similar to Fitting's semantics for the Logic of Proofs LP. We show the soundness, completeness, and finite model property of our multi-agent justification logic with respect to this Kripke-style semantics. We demonstrate that our logic is a conservative extension of Yavorskaya's minimal bimodal explicit evidence logic, which is a two-agent version of LP. We discuss the relationship of our logic to the multi-agent modal logic S4 with common knowledge. Finally, we give a brief analysis of the coordinated attack problem in the newly developed language of our logic

Tracking evidence

In this case study we describe an approach to a general logical framework for tracking evidence within epistemic contexts. We consider as basic an example which features two justifications for a true statement, one which is correct and one which is not. We formalize this example in a system of Justification Logic with two knowers: the object agent and the observer, and we show that whereas the object agent does not logically distinguish between factive and non-factive justifications, such distinctions can be attained at the observer level by analyzing the structure of evidence terms. Basic logic properties of the corresponding two-agent Justification Logic system have been established, which include Kripke-Fitting completeness. We also argue that a similar evidence-tracking approach can be applied to analyzing paraconsistent systems.