To show that a formula A is not provable in propositional classical logic, it suffices to exhibit a finite boolean model which does not satisfy A. A similar property holds in the intuitionistic case, with Kripke models instead of boolean models (see for instance [11]). One says that the propositional classical logic and the propositional intuitionistic logic satisfy a finite model property. In particular, they are decidable: there is a semi-algorithm for provability (proof search) and a semi-algorithm for non provability (model search). For that reason, a logic which is undecidable, such as first order logic, cannot satisfy a finite model property.The case of linear logic is more complicated. The full propositional fragment LL has a complete semantics in terms of phase spaces [2, 3], but it is undecidable [9]. The multiplicative additive fragment MALL is decidable, in fact PSPACE-complete [9], but the decidability of the multiplicative exponential fragment MELL is still an open problem. For affine logic, that is, linear logic with weakening, the situation is somewhat better: the full propositional fragment LLW is decidable [5].Here, we show that the finite phase semantics is complete for MALL and for LLW, but not for MELL. In particular, this gives a new proof of the decidability of LLW. The noncommutative case is mentioned, but not handled in detail.
On structuring proof search for first order linear logic
