Schema Complexity in Propositional-Based Logics

The essential structure of derivations is used as a tool for measuring the complexity of schema consequences in propositional-based logics. Our schema derivations allow the use of schema lemmas and this is reflected on the schema complexity. In particular, the number of times a schema lemma is used in a derivation is not relevant. We also address the application of metatheorems and compare the complexity of a schema derivation after eliminating the metatheorem and before doing so. As illustrations, we consider a propositional modal logic presented by a Hilbert calculus and an intuitionist propositional logic presented by a Gentzen calculus. For the former, we discuss the use of the metatheorem of deduction and its elimination, and for the latter, we analyze the cut and its elimination. Furthermore, we capitalize on the result for the cut elimination for intuitionistic logic, to obtain a similar result for Nelson’s logic via a language translation.

Completeness of Pledger’s modal logics of one-sorted projective and elliptic planes

Ken Pledger devised a one-sorted approach to the incidence relation of plane geometries, using structures that also support models of propositional modal logic. He introduced a modal system 12g that is valid in one-sorted projective planes, proved that it has finitely many non-equivalent modalities, and identified all possible modality patterns of its extensions. One of these extensions 8f is valid in elliptic planes. These results were presented in his 1980 doctoral dissertation, which is reprinted in this issue of the Australasian Journal of Logic. Here we show that 12g and 8f are strongly complete for validity in their intended one-sorted geometrical interpretations, and have the finite model property. The proofs apply standard technology of modal logic (canonical models, filtrations) together with a step-by-step procedure introduced by Yde Venema for constructing two-sorted projective planes.

FIRST-ORDER POSSIBILITY MODELS AND FINITARY COMPLETENESS PROOFS

This article builds on Humberstone’s idea of defining models of propositional modal logic where total possible worlds are replaced by partial possibilities. We follow a suggestion of Humberstone by introducing possibility models for quantified modal logic. We show that a simple quantified modal logic is sound and complete for our semantics. Although Holliday showed that for many propositional modal logics, it is possible to give a completeness proof using a canonical model construction where every possibility consists of finitely many formulas, we show that this is impossible to do in the first-order case. However, one can still construct a canonical model where every possibility consists of a computable set of formulas and thus still of finitely much information.

COMPLETENESS OF SECOND-ORDER PROPOSITIONAL S4 AND H IN TOPOLOGICAL SEMANTICS

We add propositional quantifiers to the propositional modal logic S4 and to the propositional intuitionistic logic H, introducing axiom schemes that are the natural analogs to axiom schemes typically used for first-order quantifiers in classical and intuitionistic logic. We show that the resulting logics are sound and complete for a topological semantics extending, in a natural way, the topological semantics for S4 and for H.

Coalescing: Syntactic Abstraction for Reasoning in First-Order Modal Logics

We present a syntactic abstraction method to reason about first-order modal logics by using theorem provers for standard first-order logic and for propositional modal logic.

Categories and Modalities

Category theory provides various guiding principles for modal logic and its semantic modeling. In particular, Stone duality, or “syntax-semantics duality”, has been a prominent theme in semantics of modal logic since the early days of modern modal logic. This chapter focuses on duality and a few other categorical principles, and brings to light how they underlie a variety of concepts, constructions, and facts in philosophical applications as well as the model theory of modal logic. In the first half of the chapter, I review the syntax-semantics duality and illustrate some of its functions in Kripke semantics and topological semantics for propositional modal logic. In the second half, taking Kripke’s semantics for quantified modal logic and David Lewis’s counterpart theory as examples, I demonstrate how we can dissect and analyze assumptions behind different semantics for first-order modal logic from a structural and unifying perspective of category theory. (As an example, I give an analysis of the import of the converse Barcan formula that goes farther than just “increasing domains”.) It will be made clear that categorical principles play essential roles behind the interaction between logic, semantics, and ontology, and that category theory provides powerful methods that help us both mathematically and philosophically in the investigation of modal logic.