scholarly journals Categoricity by convention

Author(s):  
Julien Murzi ◽  
Brett Topey

AbstractOn a widespread naturalist view, the meanings of mathematical terms are determined, and can only be determined, by the way we use mathematical language—in particular, by the basic mathematical principles we’re disposed to accept. But it’s mysterious how this can be so, since, as is well known, minimally strong first-order theories are non-categorical and so are compatible with countless non-isomorphic interpretations. As for second-order theories: though they typically enjoy categoricity results—for instance, Dedekind’s categoricity theorem for second-order and Zermelo’s quasi-categoricity theorem for second-order —these results require full second-order logic. So appealing to these results seems only to push the problem back, since the principles of second-order logic are themselves non-categorical: those principles are compatible with restricted interpretations of the second-order quantifiers on which Dedekind’s and Zermelo’s results are no longer available. In this paper, we provide a naturalist-friendly, non-revisionary solution to an analogous but seemingly more basic problem—Carnap’s Categoricity Problem for propositional and first-order logic—and show that our solution generalizes, giving us full second-order logic and thereby securing the categoricity or quasi-categoricity of second-order mathematical theories. Briefly, the first-order quantifiers have their intended interpretation, we claim, because we’re disposed to follow the quantifier rules in an open-ended way. As we show, given this open-endedness, the interpretation of the quantifiers must be permutation-invariant and so, by a theorem recently proved by Bonnay and Westerståhl, must be the standard interpretation. Analogously for the second-order case: we prove, by generalizing Bonnay and Westerståhl’s theorem, that the permutation invariance of the interpretation of the second-order quantifiers, guaranteed once again by the open-endedness of our inferential dispositions, suffices to yield full second-order logic.

1985 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 714-742 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stewart Shapiro

There are well-known theorems in mathematical logic that indicate rather profound differences between the logic of first-order languages and the logic of second-order languages. In the first-order case, for example, there is Gödel's completeness theorem: every consistent set of sentences (vis-à-vis a standard axiomatization) has a model. As a corollary, first-order logic is compact: if a set of formulas is not satisfiable, then it has a finite subset which also is not satisfiable. The downward Löwenheim-Skolem theorem is that every set of satisfiable first-order sentences has a model whose cardinality is at most countable (or the cardinality of the set of sentences, whichever is greater), and the upward Löwenheim-Skolem theorem is that if a set of first-order sentences has, for each natural number n, a model whose cardinality is at least n, then it has, for each infinite cardinal κ (greater than or equal to the cardinality of the set of sentences), a model of cardinality κ. It follows, of course, that no set of first-order sentences that has an infinite model can be categorical. Second-order logic, on the other hand, is inherently incomplete in the sense that no recursive, sound axiomatization of it is complete. It is not compact, and there are many well-known categorical sets of second-order sentences (with infinite models). Thus, there are no straightforward analogues to the Löwenheim-Skolem theorems for second-order languages and logic.There has been some controversy in recent years as to whether “second-order logic” should be considered a part of logic, but this boundary issue does not concern me directly, at least not here.


Author(s):  
Tim Button ◽  
Sean Walsh

In this chapter, the focus shifts from numbers to sets. Again, no first-order set theory can hope to get anywhere near categoricity, but Zermelo famously proved the quasi-categoricity of second-order set theory. As in the previous chapter, we must ask who is entitled to invoke full second-order logic. That question is as subtle as before, and raises the same problem for moderate modelists. However, the quasi-categorical nature of Zermelo's Theorem gives rise to some specific questions concerning the aims of axiomatic set theories. Given the status of Zermelo's Theorem in the philosophy of set theory, we include a stand-alone proof of this theorem. We also prove a similar quasi-categoricity for Scott-Potter set theory, a theory which axiomatises the idea of an arbitrary stage of the iterative hierarchy.


Author(s):  
Stewart Shapiro

Typically, a formal language has variables that range over a collection of objects, or domain of discourse. A language is ‘second-order’ if it has, in addition, variables that range over sets, functions, properties or relations on the domain of discourse. A language is third-order if it has variables ranging over sets of sets, or functions on relations, and so on. A language is higher-order if it is at least second-order. Second-order languages enjoy a greater expressive power than first-order languages. For example, a set S of sentences is said to be categorical if any two models satisfying S are isomorphic, that is, have the same structure. There are second-order, categorical characterizations of important mathematical structures, including the natural numbers, the real numbers and Euclidean space. It is a consequence of the Löwenheim–Skolem theorems that there is no first-order categorical characterization of any infinite structure. There are also a number of central mathematical notions, such as finitude, countability, minimal closure and well-foundedness, which can be characterized with formulas of second-order languages, but cannot be characterized in first-order languages. Some philosophers argue that second-order logic is not logic. Properties and relations are too obscure for rigorous foundational study, while sets and functions are in the purview of mathematics, not logic; logic should not have an ontology of its own. Other writers disqualify second-order logic because its consequence relation is not effective – there is no recursively enumerable, sound and complete deductive system for second-order logic. The deeper issues underlying the dispute concern the goals and purposes of logical theory. If a logic is to be a calculus, an effective canon of inference, then second-order logic is beyond the pale. If, on the other hand, one aims to codify a standard to which correct reasoning must adhere, and to characterize the descriptive and communicative abilities of informal mathematical practice, then perhaps there is room for second-order logic.


1969 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 226-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon Barwise

In recent years much effort has gone into the study of languages which strengthen the classical first-order predicate calculus in various ways. This effort has been motivated by the desire to find a language which is(I) strong enough to express interesting properties not expressible by the classical language, but(II) still simple enough to yield interesting general results. Languages investigated include second-order logic, weak second-order logic, ω-logic, languages with generalized quantifiers, and infinitary logic.


2004 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Jerome Keisler ◽  
Wafik Boulos Lotfallah

AbstractThis paper studies the expressive power that an extra first order quantifier adds to a fragment of monadic second order logic, extending the toolkit of Janin and Marcinkowski [JM01].We introduce an operation existsn (S) on properties S that says “there are n components having S”. We use this operation to show that under natural strictness conditions, adding a first order quantifier word u to the beginning of a prefix class V increases the expressive power monotonically in u. As a corollary, if the first order quantifiers are not already absorbed in V, then both the quantifier alternation hierarchy and the existential quantifier hierarchy in the positive first order closure of V are strict.We generalize and simplify methods from Marcinkowski [Mar99] to uncover limitations of the expressive power of an additional first order quantifier, and show that for a wide class of properties S, S cannot belong to the positive first order closure of a monadic prefix class W unless it already belongs to W.We introduce another operation alt(S) on properties which has the same relationship with the Circuit Value Problem as reach(S) (defined in [JM01]) has with the Directed Reachability Problem. We use alt(S) to show that Πn ⊈ FO(Σn), Σn ⊈ FO(∆n). and ∆n+1 ⊈ FOB(Σn), solving some open problems raised in [Mat98].


2010 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Koellner

AbstractIn this paper we investigate strong logics of first and second order that have certain absoluteness properties. We begin with an investigation of first order logic and the strong logics ω-logic and β-logic, isolating two facets of absoluteness, namely, generic invariance and faithfulness. It turns out that absoluteness is relative in the sense that stronger background assumptions secure greater degrees of absoluteness. Our aim is to investigate the hierarchies of strong logics of first and second order that are generically invariant and faithful against the backdrop of the strongest large cardinal hypotheses. We show that there is a close correspondence between the two hierarchies and we characterize the strongest logic in each hierarchy. On the first-order side, this leads to a new presentation of Woodin's Ω-logic. On the second-order side, we compare the strongest logic with full second-order logic and argue that the comparison lends support to Quine's claim that second-order logic is really set theory in sheep's clothing.


2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Elberfeld ◽  
Martin Grohe ◽  
Till Tantau

10.29007/t28j ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loris D'Antoni ◽  
Margus Veanes

We extend weak monadic second-order logic of one successor (WS1S) to symbolic alphabets byallowing character predicates to range over decidable first order theories and not just finite alphabets.We call this extension symbolic WS1S (s-WS1S). We then propose two decision procedures for such alogic: 1) we use symbolic automata to extend the classic reduction from WS1S to finite automata toour symbolic logic setting; 2) we show that every s-WS1S formula can be reduced to a WS1S formulathat preserves satisfiability, at the price of an exponential blow-up.


2012 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anders Søgaard ◽  
Søren Lind Kristiansen

Existing logic-based querying tools for dependency treebanks use first order logic or monadic second order logic. We introduce a very fast model checker based on hybrid logic with operators ↓, @ and A and show that it is much faster than an existing querying tool for dependency treebanks based on first order logic, and much faster than an existing general purpose hybrid logic model checker. The querying tool is made publicly available.


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