On the decidability of implicational ticket entailment

The implicational fragment of the logic of relevant implication, R→ is known to be decidable. We show that the implicational fragment of the logic of ticket entailment, T→ is decidable. Our proof is based on the consecution calculus that we introduced specifically to solve this 50-year old open problem. We reduce the decidability problem of T→ to the decidability problem of R→. The decidability of T→ is equivalent to the decidability of the inhabitation problem of implicational types by combinators over the base {B, B′, I, W}.

Ticket Entailment is decidable

We prove the decidability of the logic T→ of Ticket Entailment. This issue was first raised by Anderson and Belnap within the framework of relevance logic, and is equivalent to the question of the decidability of type inhabitation in simply typed combinatory logic with the partial basis BB′IW. We solve the equivalent problem of type inhabitation for the restriction of simply typed lambda calculus to hereditarily right-maximal terms.

Extending the Curry-Howard interpretation to linear, relevant and other resource logics

The so-called Curry-Howard interpretation (Curry [1934], Curry and Feys [1958], Howard [1969], Tait [1965]) is known to provide a rather neat term-functional account of intuitionistic implication. Could one refine the interpretation to obtain an almost as good account of other neighbouring implications, including the so-called ‘resource’ implications (e.g. linear, relevant, etc.)?We answer this question positively by demonstrating that just by working with side conditions on the rule of assertability conditions for the connective representing implication (‘→’) one can characterise those ‘resource’ logics. The idea stems from the realisation that whereas the elimination rule for conditionals (of which implication is a particular case) remains virtually unchanged no matter what kind of conditional one has (i.e. linear, relevant, intuitionistic, classical, etc., all have modus ponens), the corresponding introduction rule carries an element of vagueness which can be explored in the characterisation of several sorts of conditionals. The rule of →-introduction is classified as an ‘improper’ inference rule, to use a terminology from Prawitz [1965]. Now, the so-called improper rules leave room for manoeuvre as to how a particular logic can be obtained just by imposing conditions on the discharge of assumptions that would correspond to the particular logical discipline one is adopting (linear, relevant, ticket entailment, intuitionistic, classical, etc.). The side conditions can be ‘naturally’ imposed, given that a degree of ‘vagueness’ is introduced by the presentation of those improper inference rules, such as the rule of →-introduction:which says: starting from assumption ‘A’, and arriving at ‘B’ via an unspecified number of steps, one can discharge the assumption and conclude that ‘A’ implies ‘B’.

The undecidability of entailment and relevant implication

In this paper we show that the propositional logics E of entailment, R of relevant implication and T of ticket entailment are undecidable. The decision problem is also shown to be unsolvable in an extensive class of related logics. The main tool used in establishing these results is an adaptation of the von Neumann coordinatization theorem for modular lattices.Interest in the decision problem for these systems dates from the late 1950s. The earliest result was obtained by Anderson and Belnap who proved that the first degree fragment of all these logics is decidable. Kripke [11] proved that the pure implicational fragments R→ and E→ of R and E are decidable. His methods were extended by Belnap and Wallace to the implication-negation fragments of these systems [3]; Kripke's methods also extend easily to include the implication-conjunction fragments of R and E. Meyer in his thesis [14] extended the result for R to include a primitive necessity operator. He also proved decidable the system R-mingle, an extension of R, and ortho-R (OR), the logic obtained from R by omitting the distribution axiom. Various weak relevant logics are also known to be decidable by model-theoretic proofs of the finite model property (see Fine [5]). Finally, S. Giambrone [7] has solved the decision problem for various logics obtained by the omission of the contraction axiom (A → ⦁ A → B) → ⦁ A → B, including R+ − W (R+ minus contraction). It is worth noting that even where positive results were obtained, the decision methods were usually of a complexity considerably greater than in the case of other nonclassical logics such as intuitionistic logic or modal logic, a fact which already indicates the difficulty of the decision problem.