Generic Modal Cut Elimination Applied to Conditional Logics

In this paper, we investigate what kind of modal logics can be constructed into the Gentzen-type formulation which enjoys the Cut elimination theorem. We treat normal, regular and monotonic modal logics. A normal modal logic is the modal logic with the Rule of Necessitation and the axiom K:□(A⊃B)⊃(□A⊃□B), a regular modal logic with the rule of inference RR :A,Г→B□A,□Г→□B and a monotonic modal logic with the rule of inference RM :A→B□A→□B. We provide Gentzen-type formulation and prove the cut elimination theorem for the following modal logics: RT4 (a regular modal logic with the axioms T:□A⊃A and 4:□A⊃□□A), MT4 (a monotonic modal logic with the axioms T and 4), MNT4 (a monotonic modal logic with the Rule of Necessitation and the axioms T and 4), RT (a regular modal logic with the axiom T), MT (a monotonic modal logic with the axiom T), MNT (a monotonic modal logic with the Rule of Necessitation and the axiom T), KL (a normal modal logic with the axiom L:□A⊃(A∨□B)) and RTA (a regular modal logic with axioms T and A:□A&B⊃□B).

We consider a general format for sequent rules for not necessarily normal modal logics based on classical or intuitionistic propositional logic and provide relatively simple local conditions ensuring cut elimination for such rule sets. The rule format encompasses e.g. rules for the boolean connectives and transitive modal logics such as S4 or its constructive version. We also adapt the method of constructing suitable rule sets by saturation to the intuitionistic setting and provide a criterium for translating axioms for intuitionistic modal logics into sequent rules. Examples include constructive modal logics and conditional logic $\mathbb{VA}$ .

21 Modal logic and philosophy

A well established technique toward developing the proof theory of a Hilbert-style modal logic is to introduce a Gentzen-style equivalent (a Gentzenisation), then develop the proof theory of the latter, and finally transfer the metatheoretical results to the original logic (e.g., [1, 6, 8, 18, 10, 12]). In the first-order modal case, on one hand we know that the Gentzenisation of the straightforward first-order extension of GL, the logic QGL, admits no cut elimination (if the rule is included as primitive; or, if not included, then the rule is not admissible [1]). On the other hand the (cut-free) Gentzenisations of the first-order modal logics M3 and ML3 of [10, 12] do have cut as an admissible rule. The syntactic cut admissibility proof given in [18] for the Gentzenisation of the propositional provability logic GL is extremely complex, and it was the basis of the proofs of cut admissibility of the Gentzenisations of M3 and ML3, where the presence of quantifiers and quantifier rules added to the complexity and length of the proof. A recent proof of cut admissibility in a cut-free Gentzenisation of GL is given in [5] and is quite short and easy to read. We adapt it here to revisit the proofs for the cases of M3 and ML3, resulting to similarly short and easy to read proofs, only slightly complicated by the presence of quantification and its relevant rules.

The present paper studies two approaches to the expressiveness of propositional modal logics based on first-degree entailment logic, FDE. We first consider the basic FDE-based modal logic BK and certain systems in its vicinity, and then turn to some FDE-based modal logics in a richer vocabulary, including modal bilattice logic, MBL. On the one hand, model-theoretic proofs of the definability of connectives along the lines of [McCullough, “Logical connectives for intuitionistic propositional logic”, Journal of Symbolic Logic 36, 1 (1971): 15–20. DOI: 10.2307/2271511] and [[17] Wansing, “Logical connectives for constructive modal logic”, Synthese 150, 3 (2006): 459–482. DOI: 10.1007/s11229-005-5518-5] are given for various FDE-based modal logics. On the other hand, building on [Odintsov and Wansing, “Disentangling FDE-based paraconsistent modal logics, Studia Logica 105, 6 (2017): 1221–1254. DOI: 10.1007/s11225-017-9753-9], expressibility is considered in terms of mutual faithful embeddability of one logic into another logic. A distinction is drawn between definitional equivalence, which is defined with respect to a pair of structural translations between two languages, and weak definitional equivalence, which is defined with respect to a weaker notion of translations. Moreover, the definitional equivalence of some FDE-based modal logics is proven, especially the definitional equivalence of MBL and a conservative extension of the logic BK□×BK□, which underlines the central role played by BK among FDE-based modal logics.

We describe in full detail a solution to the problem of proving the cut elimination theorem for FILL, a variant of (multiplicative and exponential-free) Linear Logic<br />introduced by Hyland and de Paiva. Hyland and de Paiva's work used a term assignment<br />system to describe FILL and barely sketched the proof of cut elimination. In this paper, as well as correcting a small mistake in their paper and extending the<br />system to deal with exponentials, we introduce a different formal system describing the intuitionistic character of FILL and we provide a full proof of the cut elimination<br />theorem. The formal system is based on a notion of dependence between formulae within a given proof and seems of independent interest. The procedure for<br />cut elimination applies to (classical) multiplicative Linear Logic, and we can (with care) restrict our attention to the subsystem FILL. The proof, as usual with cut<br />elimination proofs, is a little involved and we have not seen it published anywhere.

Three-valued conditional logic (CL), defined by Guzm ́an and Squier (1990) and based on McCarthy’s noncommutative connectives, axiomatises a short-circuit logic (SCL), that is, a logic that prescribes shortcircuit evaluation of conjunction and disjunction. CL defines more identities than three-valued MSCL (Memorising SCL, which also has a two-valued variant). This follows from the fact that the definable connective that prescribes full left-sequential conjunction is commutative in CL. We observe that CL also has a two-valued variant of which the full left-sequential connectives and negation define a commutative logic that is weaker than propositional logic because the absorption laws do not hold. Next, we show that the original, equational axiomatisation of CL is not independent and give several alternative, independent axiomatisations. Finally, we show that in CL, the full left-sequential connectives and negation define Bochvar’s three-valued logic. The paper ends with an appendix on the use of Prover9 and Mace4.

The propositional modal logic is obtained by adding the necessity operator □ to the propositional logic. Each formula in the propositional logic is equivalent to a formula in the disjunctive normal form. In order to obtain the correspondence between the propositional modal logic and the propositional logic, we add the axiom \(\Box\varphi \leftrightarrow\Diamond\varphi \) to K and get a new system K + . Each formula in such a logic is equivalent to a formula in the disjunctive normal form, where □ k (k ≥ 0) only occurs before an atomic formula p, and \(\lnot\) only occurs before a pseudo-atomic formula of form □ k p. Maximally consistent sets of K + have a property holding in the propositional logic: a set of pseudo-atom-complete formulas uniquely determines a maximally consistent set. When a pseudo-atomic formula □ k p i (k,i ≥ 0) is corresponding to a propositional variable q ki , each formula in K + then can be corresponding to a formula in the propositional logic P + . We can also get the correspondence of models between K + and P + . Then we get correspondences of theorems and valid formulas between them. So, the soundness theorem and the completeness theorem of K + follow directly from those of P + .

On the number of steps in proofs

Some modal logics based on logics weaker than the classical logic have been studied by Fitch [4], Prior [7], Bull [1], [2], [3], Prawitz [6] etc. Here we treat modal logics based on the intuitionistic propositional logic, which call intuitionistic modal logics (abbreviated as IML’s). Let H be the intuitionistic propositional logic formulated in the Hilbertstyle. The rules of inference of H are modus ponens and the rule of substitution. The IML L0 is obtained from H by adding the following three axioms,

In this article we study the complexity of disjunction property for intuitionistic logic, the modal logicsS4,S4.1, Grzegorczyk logic, Gödel-Löb logic, and the intuitionistic counterpart of the modal logicK. ForS4we even prove the feasible interpolation theorem and we provide a lower bound for the length of proofs. The techniques we use do not require proving structural properties of the calculi in hand, such as the cut-elimination theorem or the normalization theorem. This is a key point of our approach, since it allows us to treat logics for which only Hilbert-style characterizations are known.

We define a natural notion of standard translation for the formulas of conditional logic which is analogous to the standard translation of modal formulas into the first-order logic. We briefly show that this translation works (modulo a lightweight first-order encoding of the conditional models) for the minimal classical conditional logic $\mathsf {CK}$ introduced by Brian Chellas in [3]; however, the main result of the article is that a classically equivalent reformulation of these notions (i.e., of standard translation plus theory of conditional models) also faithfully embeds the basic Nelsonian conditional logic $\mathsf {N4CK}$ , introduced in [11] into $\mathsf {QN4}$ , the paraconsistent variant of Nelson’s first-order logic of strong negation. Thus $\mathsf {N4CK}$ is the logic induced by the Nelsonian reading of the classical Chellas semantics of conditionals and can, therefore, be considered a faithful analogue of $\mathsf {CK}$ on the non-classical basis provided by the propositional fragment of $\mathsf {QN4}$ . Moreover, the methods used to prove our main result can be easily adapted to the case of modal logic, which makes it possible to improve an older result [10, Proposition 7] by S. Odintsov and H. Wansing about the standard translation embedding of the Nelsonian modal logic $\mathsf {FSK}^d$ into $\mathsf {QN4}$ .

We consider the relationship between the algorithmic properties of the validity problem for a modal or superintuitionistic propositional logic and the size of the smallest Kripke countermodels for non-theorems of the logic. We establish the existence, for every degree of unsolvability, of a propositional logic whose validity problem belongs to the degree and whose every non-theorem is refuted on a Kripke frame that validates the logic and has the size linear in the length of the non-theorem. Such logics are obtained among the normal extensions of the propositional modal logics $\textbf {KTB}$, $\textbf {GL}$ and $\textbf {Grz}$ as well as in the lattice of superintuitionistic propositional logics. This shows that the computational complexity of a modal or superintuitionistic propositional logic is, in general, not related to the size of the countermodels for its non-theorems.

Bisimulation is a central concept in the model theory of modal logic with extensive computational applications. It is a relation between two models in which related states have identical atomic properties and matching transition possibilities. Bisimulation captures the expressive power of propositional modal logic in the sense that bisimilar states are not distinguishable by any propositional modal formula. In recent years, fuzzy modal logic has received much attention because of the connection between uncertainty measures and fuzzy modalities. In this paper, we define the notion of fuzzy bisimulation and prove that, in a fuzzified version, it bears the same relationship to fuzzy modal logic that bisimulation bears to propositional modal logic.

Propositional modal provability logics like G and Grz have arithmetical interpretations where □φ can be read as ‘formula φ is provable in Peano Arithmetic’. These logics are decidable but are characterized by classes of Kripke frames which are not first‐order definable. By abstracting the aspects common to their characteristic axioms we define the notion of a formula generation map F(P) in one propositional variable. We then focus our attention on the properly displayable subset of all (first‐order definable) Sahlqvist modal logics. For any logic L from this subset, we consider the (provability) logic LF obtained by the addition of an axiom based upon a formula generation map F(P) so that LF = L + F(P). The class of such logics includes G and Grz. By appropriately modifying the right introduction rules for □, we give (not necessarily cut‐free) display calculi for every such logic. We define the pseudo‐displayable subset of these logics as those whose display calculi enjoy cut‐elimination for sequents of the form ⊤ ⊢ φ for any formula φ. We then show that for any provability logic LF having a conservative tense extension, there is a map f on formulae such that LF is pseudo‐displayable if and only if f maps theorems of LF to theorems of the underlying logic L and vice versa. By using a standard renaming technique we can guarantee that there is a polynomial‐time translation from LF into L. All proofs are purely syntactic and show the versatility of display calculi since similar results using traditional Gentzen calculi are not possible for as broad a range of logics and require further conditions. Our maps generalize previously known maps from G into K4. An application of our results gives an O(n.log n)3) translation from the (‘second order’) provability logic Grz into a decidable subset of first‐order logic. Since each of our logics L is a Sahlqvist logic, it is first‐order definable, and hence each L has a translation into first‐order logic. Our results therefore show that all pseudo‐displayable logics LF are ‘essentially first‐order’ even though their characteristic axiom may not be first‐order definable.