The present discussion takes up an issue raised in Section 5 of Ross Brady and Penelope Rush’s paper ‘Four Basic Logical Issues’ concerning the (claimed) triviality – in the sense of automatic availability – of soundness and completeness results for a logic in a metalanguage employing at least as much logical vocabulary as the object logic, where the metalogical behaviour of the common logical vocabulary is as in the object logic. We shall see – in Propositions 4.5–4.7 – that this (...) triviality claim faces difficulties in the face of Halldén incompleteness, for essentially the same reasons that Halldén thought this phenomenon raised seman- tic difficulties for the modal logics of C. I. Lewis exhibiting it. To counter any inclination to dismiss the phenomenon as providing at best a marginal range of counterexamples to the triviality claim, a Postscript assembles some reminders of the extent of – and the varied considerations favouring – Halldén incompleteness. (shrink)

In this paper, I will develop a set of boulesic-doxastic tableau systems and prove that they are sound and complete. Boulesic-doxastic logic consists of two main parts: a boulesic part and a doxastic part. By ‘boulesic logic’ I mean ‘the logic of the will’, and by ‘doxastic logic’ I mean ‘the logic of belief’. The first part deals with ‘boulesic’ concepts, expressions, sentences, arguments and theorems. I will concentrate on two types of boulesic expression: ‘individual x wants it to be (...) the case that’ and ‘individual x accepts that it is the case that’. The second part deals with ‘doxastic’ concepts, expressions, sentences, arguments and theorems. I will concentrate on two types of doxastic expression: ‘individual x believes that’ and ‘it is imaginable to individual x that’. Boulesic-doxastic logic investigates how these concepts are related to each other. Boulesic logic is a new kind of logic. Doxastic logic has been around for a while, but the approach to this branch of logic in this paper is new. Each system is combined with modal logic with two kinds of modal operators for historical and absolute necessity and predicate logic with necessary identity and ‘possibilist’ quantifiers. I use a kind of possible world semantics to describe the systems semantically. I also sketch out how our basic language can be extended with propositional quantifiers. All the systems developed in this paper are new. (shrink)

While much of semantic theorizing is based on intuitions about logical phenomena associated with linguistic constructions—phenomena such as consistency and entailment—it is rare to see axiomatic treatments of linguistic fragments. Given a fragment interpreted in some class of formally specified models, it is often possible to ask for a characterization of the reasoning patterns validated by the class of models. Axiomatizations provide such a characterization, often in a perspicuous and efficient manner. In this paper, we highlight some of the benefits (...) of providing axiomatizations for the purpose of semantic theorizing. We illustrate some of these benefits using three examples from the study of modality. (shrink)

Well-known results due to David Makinson show that there are exactly two Post complete normal modal logics, that in both of them, the modal operator is truth-functional, and that every consistent normal modal logic can be extended to at least one of them. Lloyd Humberstone has recently shown that a natural analog of this result in congruential modal logics fails, by showing that not every congruential modal logic can be extended to one in which the modal operator is truth-functional. As (...) Humberstone notes, the issue of Post completeness in congruential modal logics is not well understood. The present article shows that in contrast to normal modal logics, the extent of the property of Post completeness among congruential modal logics depends on the background set of logics. Some basic results on the corresponding properties of Post completeness are established, in particular that although a congruential modal logic is Post complete among all modal logics if and only if its modality is truth-functional, there are continuum many modal logics Post complete among congruential modal logics. (shrink)

We present our personal view on W.J. Blok's contribution to modal logic.

Modal logic is concerned with the analysis of sentential operators in the widest sense. Originally invented to analyse the notion of necessity applications have been found in many areas of philosophy, logic, linguistics and computer science. This in turn has led to an increased interest in the technical development of modal logic.

While monadic second-order logic (MSO) has played a prominent role in model theoretic syntax, modal logics have been used in this context since its inception. When comparing propositional dynamic logic (PDL) to MSO over trees, Kracht (1997) noted that there are tree languages that can be defined in MSO that can only be defined in PDL by adding new features whose distribution is predictable. He named such features “inessential features”. We show that Kracht’s observation can be extended to other modal (...) logics of trees in two ways. First, we demonstrate that for each stronger logic, there exists a tree language that can only be defined in a weaker logic with inessential features. Second, we show that any tree language that can be defined in a stronger logic, but not in some weaker logic, can be defined with inessential features. Additionally, we consider Kracht’s definition of inessential features more closely. It turns out that there are features whose distribution can be predicted, but who fail to be inessential in Kracht’s sense. We will look at ways to modify his definition. (shrink)

The global consequence relation of a normal modal logic \ is formulated as a global sequent calculus which extends the local sequent theory of \ with global sequent rules. All global sequent calculi of normal modal logics admits global cut elimination. This property is utilized to show that decidability is preserved from the local to global sequent theories of any normal modal logic over \. The preservation of Craig interpolation property from local to global sequent theories of any normal modal (...) logic is shown by proof-theoretic method. (shrink)

In 1933 Godel introduced a calculus of provability (also known as modal logic S4) and left open the question of its exact intended semantics. In this paper we give a solution to this problem. We find the logic LP of propositions and proofs and show that Godel's provability calculus is nothing but the forgetful projection of LP. This also achieves Godel's objective of defining intuitionistic propositional logic Int via classical proofs and provides a Brouwer-Heyting-Kolmogorov style provability semantics for Int which (...) resisted formalization since the early 1930s. LP may be regarded as a unified underlying structure for intuitionistic, modal logics, typed combinatory logic and λ-calculus. (shrink)

The Kuznetsov-Index of a modal logic is the least cardinal such that any consistent formula has a Kripke-model of size if it has a Kripke-model at all. The Kuznetsov-Spectrum is the set of all Kuznetsov-Indices of modal logics with countably many operators. It has been shown by Thomason that there are tense logics with Kuznetsov-Index . Futhermore, Chagrov has constructed an extension of K4 with Kuznetsov-Index . We will show here that for each countable ordinal there are logics with Kuznetsov-Index (...) . Furthermore, we show that the Kuznetsov-Spectrum is identical to the spectrum of indices for -theories which is likewise defined. A particular consequence is the following. If inaccessible (weakly compact, measurable) cardinals exist, then the least inaccessible (weakly compact, measurable) cardinal is also a Kuznetsov-Index. (shrink)

This papers gives a survey of recent results about simulations of one class of modal logics by another class and of the transfer of properties of modal logics under extensions of the underlying modal language. We discuss: the transfer from normal polymodal logics to their fusions, the transfer from normal modal logics to their extensions by adding the universal modality, and the transfer from normal monomodal logics to minimal tense extensions. Likewise, we discuss simulations of normal polymodal logics by normal (...) monomodal logics, of nominals and the difference operator by normal operators, of monotonic monomodal logics by normal bimodal logics, of polyadic normal modal logics by polymodal normal modal logics, and of intuitionistic modal logics by normal bimodal logics. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that a variety of consequence relations can be subsumed under a common core. The reduction proceeds by taking the unconditional consequence, or judgment, as basic and deriving the conditional consequence via a uniform abstraction scheme. A specific outcome is that it is better not to base such a scheme on the semantic notion of a matrix and valuation but rather on theories and substitutions. I will also briefly look at consequence relations that are not reducible (...) in this way. (shrink)

The relationships between various modal logics based on Belnap and Dunn’s paraconsistent four-valued logic FDE are investigated. It is shown that the paraconsistent modal logic \, which lacks a primitive possibility operator \, is definitionally equivalent with the logic \, which has both \ and \ as primitive modalities. Next, a tableau calculus for the paraconsistent modal logic KN4 introduced by L. Goble is defined and used to show that KN4 is definitionally equivalent with \ without the absurdity constant. Moreover, (...) a tableau calculus is defined for the modal bilattice logic MBL introduced and investigated by A. Jung, U. Rivieccio, and R. Jansana. MBL is a generalization of BK that in its Kripke semantics makes use of a four-valued accessibility relation. It is shown that MBL can be faithfully embedded into the bimodal logic \ over the non-modal vocabulary of MBL. On the way from \ to MBL, the Fischer Servi-style modal logic \ is defined as the set of all modal formulas valid under a modified standard translation into first-order FDE, and \ is shown to be characterized by the class of all models for \. Moreover, \ is axiomatized and this axiom system is proved to be strongly sound and complete with respect to the class of models for \. Moreover, the notion of definitional equivalence is suitably weakened, so as to show that \ and \ are weakly definitionally equivalent. (shrink)

Stable logics are modal logics characterized by a class of frames closed under relation preserving images. These logics admit all filtrations. Since many basic modal systems such as K4 and S4 are not stable, we introduce the more general concept of an M-stable logic, where M is an arbitrary normal modal logic that admits some filtration. Of course, M can be chosen to be K4 or S4. We give several characterizations of M-stable logics. We prove that there are continuum many (...) S4-stable logics and continuum many K4-stable logics between K4 and S4. We axiomatize K4-stable and S4-stable logics by means of stable formulas and discuss the connection between S4-stable logics and stable superintuitionistic logics. We conclude the article with many examples (and nonexamples) of stable, K4-stable, and S4-stable logics and provide their axiomatization in terms of stable rules and formulas. (shrink)

Special issue: "Reflecting on the Legacy of C.I. Lewis: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives on Modal Logic".