Quantification over Sets of Possible Worlds in Branching-Time Semantics

Temporal logic is one of the many areas in which a possible world semantics is adopted. Prior's Ockhamist and Peircean semantics for branching-time, though, depart from the genuine Kripke semantics in that they involve a quantification over histories, which is a second-order quantification over sets of possible worlds. In the paper, variants of the original Prior's semantics will be considered and it will be shown that all of them can be viewed as first-order counterparts of the original semantics.     

Moment/History Duality in Prior’s Logics of Branching-Time

The basic notions in Prior’s Ockhamist and Peircean logics of branching-time are the notion of moment and that of history (or course of events). In the tree semantics, histories are defined as maximal linearly ordered sets of moments. In the geometrical approach, both moments and histories are primitive entities and there is no set theoretical (and ontological) dependency of the latter on the former. In the topological approach, moments can be defined as the elements of a rank 1 base of a non-Archimedean topology on the set of histories. In this paper, it will be shown that the topological approach, and hence the other approaches, can be reconstructed in a framework in which the basic notions are those of history and of relative closeness relation among histories.     

Propositional Epistemic Logics with Quantification Over Agents of Knowledge

The paper presents a family of propositional epistemic logics such that languages of these logics are extended by quantification over modal (epistemic) operators or over agents of knowledge and extended by predicate symbols that take modal (epistemic) operators (or agents) as arguments. Denote this family by \({\mathcal {P}\mathcal {E}\mathcal {L}}_{({ QK})}\). There exist epistemic logics whose languages have the above mentioned properties (see, for example Corsi and Orlandelli in Stud Log 101:1159–1183, 2013; Fitting et al. in Stud Log 69:133–169, 2001; Grove in Artif Intell 74(2):311–350, 1995; Lomuscio and Colombetti in Proceedings of ATAL 1996. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), vol 1193, pp 71–85, 1996). But these logics are obtained from first-order modal logics, while a logic of \({\mathcal {P}\mathcal {E}\mathcal {L}}_{({ QK})}\) can be regarded as a propositional multi-modal logic whose language includes quantifiers over modal (epistemic) operators and predicate symbols that take modal (epistemic) operators as arguments. Among the logics of \({\mathcal {P}\mathcal {E}\mathcal {L}}_{({ QK})}\) there are logics with a syntactical distinction between two readings of epistemic sentences: de dicto and de re (between ‘knowing that’ and ‘knowing of’). We show the decidability of logics of \({\mathcal {P}\mathcal {E}\mathcal {L}}_{({ QK})}\) with the help of the loosely guarded fragment (LGF) of first-order logic. Namely, we generalize LGF to a higher-order decidable loosely guarded fragment. The latter fragment allows us to construct various decidable propositional epistemic logics with quantification over modal (epistemic) operators. The family of this logics coincides with \({\mathcal {P}\mathcal {E}\mathcal {L}}_{({ QK})}\). There are decidable propositional logics such that these logics implicitly contain quantification over agents of knowledge, but languages of these logics are usual propositional epistemic languages without quantifiers and predicate symbols (see Grove and Halpern in J Log Comput 3(4):345–378, 1993). Some logics of \({\mathcal {P}\mathcal {E}\mathcal {L}}_{({ QK})}\) can be regarded as counterparts of logics defined in Grove and Halpern (J Log Comput 3(4):345–378, 1993). We prove that the satisfiability problem for these logics of \({\mathcal {P}\mathcal {E}\mathcal {L}}_{({ QK})}\) is Pspace-complete using their counterparts in Grove and Halpern (J Log Comput 3(4):345–378, 1993).     

A clausal resolution method for extended computation tree logic ECTL

A temporal clausal resolution method was originally developed for linear time temporal logic and further extended to the branching-time framework of Computation Tree Logic (CTL). In this paper, following our general idea to expand the applicability of this efficient method to more expressive formalisms useful in a variety of applications in computer science and AI requiring branching time logics, we define a clausal resolution technique for Extended Computation Tree Logic (ECTL). The branching-time temporal logic ECTL is strictly more expressive than CTL in allowing fairness operators. The key elements of the resolution method for ECTL, namely the clausal normal form, the concepts of step resolution and a temporal resolution, are introduced and justified with respect to this new framework. Although in developing these components we incorporate many of the techniques defined for CTL, we need novel mechanisms in order to capture fairness together with the limit closure property of the underlying tree models. We accompany our presentation of the relevant techniques by examples of the application of the temporal resolution method. Finally, we provide a correctness argument and consider future work discussing an extension of the method yet further, to the logic CTL^*, the most powerful logic of this class.     

Term-Modal Logics

Many powerful logics exist today for reasoning about multi-agent systems, but in most of these it is hard to reason about an infinite or indeterminate number of agents. Also the naming schemes used in the logics often lack expressiveness to name agents in an intuitive way.To obtain a more expressive language for multi-agent reasoning and a better naming scheme for agents, we introduce a family of logics called term-modal logics. A main feature of our logics is the use of modal operators indexed by the terms of the logics. Thus, one can quantify over variables occurring in modal operators. In term-modal logics agents can be represented by terms, and knowledge of agents is expressed with formulas within the scope of modal operators.This gives us a flexible and uniform language for reasoning about the agents themselves and their knowledge. This article gives examples of the expressiveness of the languages and provides sequent-style and tableau-based proof systems for the logics. Furthermore we give proofs of soundness and completeness with respect to the possible world semantics.     

Coinductive models and normal forms for modal logics (or how we learned to stop worrying and love coinduction)

We present a coinductive definition of models for modal logics and show that it provides a homogeneous framework in which it is possible to include different modal languages ranging from classical modalities to operators from hybrid and memory logics. Moreover, results that had to be proved separately for each different language—but whose proofs were known to be mere routine—now can be proved in a general way. We show, for example, that we can have a unique definition of bisimulation for all these languages, and prove a single invariance-under-bisimulation theorem.We then use the new framework to investigate normal forms for modal logics. The normal form we introduce may have a smaller modal depth than the original formula, and it is inspired by global modalities like the universal modality and the satisfiability operator from hybrid logics. These modalities can be extracted from under the scope of other operators. We provide a general definition of extractable modalities and show how to compute extracted normal forms. As it is the case with other classical normal forms—e.g., the conjunctive normal form of propositional logic—the extracted normal form of a formula can be exponentially bigger than the original formula, if we require the two formulas to be equivalent. If we only require equi-satisfiability, then every modal formula has an extracted normal form which is only polynomially bigger than the original formula, and it can be computed in polynomial time.     

Topological Aspects of Branching-Time Semantics

The aim of this paper is to present a new perspective under which branching-time semantics can be viewed. The set of histories (maximal linearly ordered sets) in a tree structure can be endowed in a natural way with a topological structure. Properties of trees and of bundled trees can be expressed in topological terms. In particular, we can consider the new notion of topological validity for Ockhamist temporal formulae. It will be proved that this notion of validity is equivalent to validity with respect to bundled trees.     

Expressivity of Imperfect Information Logics without Identity

In this article we investigate the family of independence-friendly (IF) logics in the equality-free setting, concentrating on questions related to expressive power. Various natural equality-free fragments of logics in this family translate into existential second-order logic with prenex quantification of function symbols only and with the first-order parts of formulae equality-free. We study this fragment of existential second-order logic. Our principal technical result is that over finite models with a vocabulary consisting of unary relation symbols only, this fragment of second-order logic is weaker in expressive power than first-order logic (with equality). Results about the fragment could turn out useful for example in the study of independence-friendly modal logics. In addition to proving results of a technical nature, we address issues related to a perspective from which IF logic is regarded as a specification framework for games, and also discuss the general significance of understanding fragments of second-order logic in investigations related to non-classical logics.     

Duality for Lattice-Ordered Algebras and for Normal Algebraizable Logics

Part I of this paper is developed in the tradition of Stone-type dualities, where we present a new topological representation for general lattices (influenced by and abstracting over both Goldblatt's [17] and Urquhart's [46]), identifying them as the lattices of stable compact-opens of their dual Stone spaces (stability refering to a closure operator on subsets). The representation is functorial and is extended to a full duality.In part II, we consider lattice-ordered algebras (lattices with additional operators), extending the Jónsson and Tarski representation results [30] for Boolean algebras with Operators. Our work can be seen as developing, and indeed completing, Dunn's project of gaggle theory [13, 14]. We consider general lattices (rather than Boolean algebras), with a broad class of operators, which we dubb normal, and which includes the Jónsson-Tarski additive operators. Representation of l-algebras is extended to full duality.In part III we discuss applications in logic of the framework developed. Specifically, logics with restricted structural rules give rise to lattices with normal operators (in our sense), such as the Full Lambek algebras (F L-algebras) studied by Ono in [36]. Our Stone-type representation results can be then used to obtain canonical constructions of Kripke frames for such systems, and to prove a duality of algebraic and Kripke semantics for such logics.     

线性时态逻辑的决策问题复杂性

不同的时态逻辑能够适应不同的推理任务。为了符合应用,关于时间的模型从离散的自然数和整数,延伸到稠密的线性实数,甚至扩展到区间代数和树代数。如果简单的时态连接词的表达力已经足够,就只需使用这些简单的时态连接词来构造的时态逻辑。在能够承担降低运算速度的风险下,我们可以为实现更强的表达力而使用更多的连接词,也可以加上度量信息或者固定点。作者近期提出了一个令人惊讶的结论:建立在实数时间上的具有足够表达力的语言和基于自然数离散时间流的传统简单算子,它们推理的计算复杂性是一样的。在这篇论文中,作者试图对建立在标准时态连接词和线性时间流的普通类上的时态逻辑中所有决策问题的计算复杂性作新的说明。尤其是,文中指出,所有标准逻辑在PSPACE中都存在决策问题。     

The Undecidability of Quantified Announcements

This paper demonstrates the undecidability of a number of logics with quantification over public announcements: arbitrary public announcement logic (APAL), group announcement logic (GAL), and coalition announcement logic (CAL). In APAL we consider the informative consequences of any announcement, in GAL we consider the informative consequences of a group of agents (this group may be a proper subset of the set of all agents) all of which are simultaneously (and publicly) making known announcements. So this is more restrictive than APAL. Finally, CAL is as GAL except that we now quantify over anything the agents not in that group may announce simultaneously as well. The logic CAL therefore has some features of game logic and of ATL. We show that when there are multiple agents in the language, the satisfiability problem is undecidable for APAL, GAL, and CAL. In the single agent case, the satisfiability problem is decidable for all three logics.     

Everettian quantum mechanics without branching time

In this paper I assess the prospects for combining contemporary Everettian quantum mechanics (EQM) with branching-time semantics in the tradition of Kripke, Prior, Thomason and Belnap. I begin by outlining the salient features of ??decoherence-based?? EQM, and of the ??consistent histories?? formalism that is particularly apt for conceptual discussions in EQM. This formalism permits of both ??branching worlds?? and ??parallel worlds?? interpretations; the metaphysics of EQM is in this sense underdetermined by the physics. A prominent argument due to Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds, 1986) supports the non-branching interpretation. Belnap et?al. (Facing the Future: Agents and Choices in Our Indeterministic World, 2001) refer to Lewis?? argument as the ??Assertion problem??, and propose a pragmatic response to it. I argue that their response is unattractively ad hoc and complex, and that it prevents an Everettian who adopts branching-time semantics from making clear sense of objective probability. The upshot is that Everettians are better off without branching-time semantics. I conclude by discussing and rejecting an alternative possible motivation for branching time.     

Towards classifying propositional probabilistic logics

This paper examines two aspects of propositional probabilistic logics: the nesting of probabilistic operators, and the expressivity of probabilistic assessments. We show that nesting can be eliminated when the semantics is based on a single probability measure over valuations; we then introduce a classification for probabilistic assessments, and present novel results on their expressivity. Logics in the literature are categorized using our results on nesting and on probabilistic expressivity.     

Arrow Logic and Infinite Counting

We consider arrow logics (i.e., propositional multi-modal logics having three -- a dyadic, a monadic, and a constant -- modal operators) augmented with various kinds of infinite counting modalities, such as 'much more', 'of good quantity', 'many times'. It is shown that the addition of these modal operators to weakly associative arrow logic results in finitely axiomatizable and decidable logics, which fail to have the finite base property.     

On Dynamic Topological and Metric Logics

We investigate computational properties of propositional logics for dynamical systems. First, we consider logics for dynamic topological systems (W.f), fi, where W is a topological space and f a homeomorphism on W. The logics come with ‘modal’ operators interpreted by the topological closure and interior, and temporal operators interpreted along the orbits {w, f(w), f² (w), ˙˙˙} of points w ε W. We show that for various classes of topological spaces the resulting logics are not recursively enumerable (and so not recursively axiomatisable). This gives a ‘negative’ solution to a conjecture of Kremer and Mints. Second, we consider logics for dynamical systems (W, f), where W is a metric space and f and isometric function. The operators for topological interior/closure are replaced by distance operators of the form ‘everywhere/somewhere in the ball of radius a, ‘for a ε Q ⁺. In contrast to the topological case, the resulting logic turns out to be decidable, but not in time bounded by any elementary function.     

Simulation and Transfer Results in Modal Logic – A Survey

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.     

Duality and Canonical Extensions of Bounded Distributive Lattices with Operators,and Applications to the Semantics of Non-Classical Logics II

The main goal of this paper is to explain the link between the algebraic models and the Kripke-style models for certain classes of propositional non-classical logics. We consider logics that are sound and complete with respect to varieties of distributive lattices with certain classes of well-behaved operators for which a Priestley-style duality holds, and present a way of constructing topological and non-topological Kripke-style models for these types of logics. Moreover, we show that, under certain additional assumptions on the variety of the algerabic models of the given logics, soundness and completeness with respect to these classes of Kripke-style models follows by using entirely algebraical arguments from the soundness and completeness of the logic with respect to its algebraic models.     

The complexity of satisfiability for fragments of hybrid logic—Part I

The satisfiability problem of hybrid logics with the downarrow binder is known to be undecidable. This initiated a research program on decidable and tractable fragments.In this paper, we investigate the effect of restricting the propositional part of the language on decidability and on the complexity of the satisfiability problem over arbitrary, transitive, total frames, and frames based on equivalence relations. We also consider different sets of modal and hybrid operators. We trace the border of decidability and give the precise complexity of most fragments, in particular for all fragments including negation. For the monotone fragments, we are able to distinguish the easy from the hard cases, depending on the allowed set of operators.     

Rosser Provability and Normal Modal Logics

Studia Logica - In this paper, we investigate Rosser provability predicates whose provability logics are normal modal logics. First, we prove that there exists a Rosser provability predicate whose...     

Every Finitely Reducible Logic has the Finite Model Property with Respect to the Class of ♦-Formulae

In this paper a unified framework for dealing with a broad family of propositional multimodal logics is developed. The key tools for presentation of the logics are the notions of closure relation operation and monotonous relation operation. The two classes of logics: FiRe-logics (finitely reducible logics) and LaFiRe-logics (FiRe-logics with local agreement of accessibility relations) are introduced within the proposed framework. Further classes of logics can be handled indirectly by means of suitable translations. It is shown that the logics from these classes have the finite model property with respect to the class of -formulae, i.e. each -formula has a -model iff it has a finite -model. Roughly speaking, a -formula is logically equivalent to a formula in negative normal form without occurrences of modal operators with necessity force. In the proof we introduce a substantial modification of Claudio Cerrato's filtration technique that has been originally designed for graded modal logics. The main core of the proof consists in building adequate restrictions of models while preserving the semantics of the operators used to build terms indexing the modal operators.