Classical propositional logic can be characterized, indirectly, by means of a complementary formal system whose theorems are exactly those formulas that are not classical tautologies, i.e., contradictions and truth-functional contingencies. Since a formula is contingent if and only if its negation is also contingent, the system in question is paraconsistent. Hence classical propositional logic itself admits of a paraconsistent characterization, albeit “in the negative”. More generally, any decidable logic with a syntactically incomplete proof theory allows for a paraconsistent characterization of (...) its set of theorems. This, we note, has important bearing on the very nature of paraconsistency as standardly characterized. (shrink)

I introduce a novel hybrid calculus H for the validities and invalidities of classical propositional logic. The calculus H is different in nature from other hybrid calculi that can be found in the literature in that it does not include specific anti-sequent rules. Instead, I add to the sequent rules of classical propositional logic only two structural rules that allow us to introduce and eliminate anti-sequents in our derivations. The resultant system is much simpler than the existing systems in the (...) literature. For one thing, it does not suffer from a proliferation of rules. For another, it is structurally complete: its admissible rules are all derivable. (shrink)