We present sound and complete sequent calculi for the modal mu-calculus with converse modalities, aka two-way modal mu-calculus. Notably, we introduce a cyclic proof system wherein proofs can be represented as finite trees with back-edges, i.e., finite graphs. The sequent calculi incorporate ordinal annotations and structural rules for managing them. Soundness is proved with relative ease as is the case for the modal mu-calculus with explicit ordinals. The main ingredients in the proof of completeness are isolating a class of non-wellfounded proofs with sequents of bounded size, called slim proofs, and a counter-model construction that shows slimness suffices to capture all validities. Slim proofs are further transformed into cyclic proofs by means of re-assigning ordinal annotations.

Orthomodular logic is a weakening of quantum logic in the sense of Birkhoff and von Neumann. Orthomodular logic is shown to be a nonlinear noncommutative logic. Sequents are given a physically motivated semantics that is consistent with exactly one semantics for propositional formulas that use negation, conjunction, and implication. In particular, implication must be interpreted as the Sasaki arrow, which satisfies the deduction theorem in this logic. As an application, this deductive system is extended to two systems of predicate logic: the first is sound for Takeuti’s quantum set theory, and the second is sound for a variant of Weaver’s quantum logic.

The proof theory of the constructive modal logic S4 (hereafter $\mathsf{CS4}$ ) has been settled since the beginning of this century by means of either standard natural deduction and sequent calculi or by the reconstruction of modal logic through hypothetical and categorical judgments à la Martin-Löf, an approach carried out by using a special kind of sequents, which keeps two separated contexts representing ordinary and enhanced hypotheses, intuitively interpreted as true and valid assumptions. These so-called dual-context sequents, originated in linear logic, are used to define a natural deduction system handling judgments of validity, truth, and possibility, resulting in a formalism equivalent to an axiomatic system for $\mathsf{CS4}$ . However, this proof-theoretical study of $\mathsf{CS4}$ lacks, to the best of our knowledge, its third fundamental constituent, namely a sequent calculus. In this paper, we define such a dual-context formalism, called ${\bf DG_{CS4}}$ , and provide detailed proofs of the admissibility for the ordinary cut rule as well as the elimination of a second cut rule, which manipulates enhanced hypotheses. Furthermore, we make available a formal verification of the equivalence of this proposal with the previously defined axiomatic and dual-context natural deduction systems for $\mathsf{CS4}$ , using the Coq proof-assistant.

We present a series of proof systems for exact entailment (i.e., relevant truthmaker preservation from premises to conclusion) and prove soundness and completeness. Using the proof systems, we observe that exact entailment is hyperintensional not only in the sense of Cresswell, but also in the sense recently proposed by Odintsov and Wansing.

The dissertation introduces new sequent-calculi for free first- and second-order logic, and a hyper-sequent calculus for modal logics K, D, T, B, S4, and S5; to attain the calculi for the stronger modal logics, only external structural rules need to be added to the calculus for K, while operational and internal structural rules remain the same. Completeness and cut-elimination are proved for all calculi presented.

Philosophically, the dissertation develops an inferentialist, or proof-theoretic, theory of meaning. It takes as a starting point that the sense of a sentence is determined by the rules governing its use. In particular, there are two features of the use of a sentence that jointly determine its sense, the conditions under which it is coherent to assert that sentence and the conditions under which it is coherent to deny that sentence. The dissertation develops a theory of quantification as marking coherent ways a language can be expanded and modality as the means by which we can reflect on the norms governing the assertion and denial conditions of our language. If the view of quantification that is argued for is correct, then there is no tension between second-order quantification and nominalism. In particular, the ontological commitments one can incur through the use of a quantifier depend wholly on the ontological commitments one can incur through the use of atomic sentences. The dissertation concludes by applying the developed theory of meaning to the metaphysical issue of necessitism and contingentism. Two objections to a logic of contingentism are raised and addressed. The resulting logic is shown to meet all the requirement that the dissertation lays out for a theory of meaning for quantifiers and modal operators.

Abstract prepared by Andrew Parisi

E-mail: [email protected]

URL: https://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations/1480/

The paper provides a proof theoretic characterization of the Russellian theory of definite descriptions (RDD) as characterized by Kalish, Montague and Mar (KMM). To this effect three sequent calculi are introduced: LKID0, LKID1 and LKID2. LKID0 is an auxiliary system which is easily shown to be equivalent to KMM. The main research is devoted to LKID1 and LKID2. The former is simpler in the sense of having smaller number of rules and, after small change, satisfies cut elimination but fails to satisfy the subformula property. In LKID2 an additional analysis of different kinds of identities leads to proliferation of rules but yields the subformula property. This refined proof theoretic analysis leading to fully analytic calculus with constructive proof of cut elimination is the main contribution of the paper.

A sequent calculus with the subformula property has long been recognised as a highly favourable starting point for the proof theoretic investigation of a logic. However, most logics of interest cannot be presented using a sequent calculus with the subformula property. In response, many formalisms more intricate than the sequent calculus have been formulated. In this work we identify an alternative: retain the sequent calculus but generalise the subformula property to permit specific axiom substitutions and their subformulas. Our investigation leads to a classification of generalised subformula properties and is applied to infinitely many substructural, intermediate, and modal logics (specifically: those with a cut-free hypersequent calculus). We also develop a complementary perspective on the generalised subformula properties in terms of logical embeddings. This yields new complexity upper bounds for contractive-mingle substructural logics and situates isolated results on the so-called simple substitution property within a general theory.

In sequent calculi, cut elimination is a property that guarantees that any provable formula can be proven analytically. For example, Gentzen’s classical and intuitionistic calculi LK and LJ enjoy cut elimination. The property is less studied in coinductive extensions of sequent calculi. In this paper, we use coinductive Horn clause theories to show that cut is not eliminable in a coinductive extension of LJ, a system we call CLJ. We derive two further practical results from this study. We show that CoLP by Gupta et al. gives rise to cut-free proofs in CLJ with fixpoint terms, and we formulate and implement a novel method of coinductive theory exploration that provides several heuristics for discovery of cut formulae in CLJ.

We investigate a recent proposal for modal hypersequent calculi. The interpretation of relational hypersequents incorporates an accessibility relation along the hypersequent. These systems give the same interpretation of hypersequents as Lellman’s linear nested sequents, but were developed independently by Restall for S5 and extended to other normal modal logics by Parisi. The resulting systems obey Došen’s principle: the modal rules are the same across different modal logics. Different modal systems only differ in the presence or absence of external structural rules. With the exception of S5, the systems are modular in the sense that different structural rules capture different properties of the accessibility relation. We provide the first direct semantical cut-free completeness proofs for K, T, and D, and show how this method fails in the case of B and S4.

We show that the replacement rule of the sequent calculi ${\bf G3[mic]}^= $ in [8] can be replaced by the simpler rule in which one of the principal formulae is not repeated in the premiss.

Any set of truth-functional connectives has sequent calculus rules that can be generated systematically from the truth tables of the connectives. Such a sequent calculus gives rise to a multi-conclusion natural deduction system and to a version of Parigot’s free deduction. The elimination rules are “general,” but can be systematically simplified. Cut-elimination and normalization hold. Restriction to a single formula in the succedent yields intuitionistic versions of these systems. The rules also yield generalized lambda calculi providing proof terms for natural deduction proofs as in the Curry–Howard isomorphism. Addition of an indirect proof rule yields classical single-conclusion versions of these systems. Gentzen’s standard systems arise as special cases.

This note shows that the permutation instructions presented by Zardini (2011) for eliminating cuts on universally quantified formulas in the sequent calculus for the noncontractive theory of truth IKTω are inadequate. To that purpose the note presents a derivation in the sequent calculus for IKTω ending with an application of cut on a universally quantified formula which the permutation instructions cannot deal with. The counterexample is of the kind that leaves open the question whether cut can be shown to be eliminable in the sequent calculus for IKTω with an alternative strategy.

We study various extensions of Gentzen’s sequent calculus obtained by adding rules for equality. One of them is singled out as particularly natural and shown to satisfy full cut elimination, namely, also atomic cuts can be eliminated. Furthermore we tell apart the extensions that satisfy full cut elimination from those that do not and establish a strengthened form of the nonlenghtening property of Lifschitz and Orevkov.

This article investigates the proof theory of the Quantified Argument Calculus (Quarc) as developed and systematically studied by Hanoch Ben-Yami [3, 4]. Ben-Yami makes use of natural deduction (Suppes-Lemmon style), we, however, have chosen a sequent calculus presentation, which allows for the proofs of a multitude of significant meta-theoretic results with minor modifications to the Gentzen’s original framework, i.e., LK. As will be made clear in course of the article LK-Quarc will enjoy cut elimination and its corollaries (including subformula property and thus consistency).

We give examples of calculi that extend Gentzen’s sequent calculus LK by unsound quantifier inferences in such a way that (i) derivations lead only to true sequents, and (ii) proofs therein are nonelementarily shorter than LK-proofs.

We present an embedding of the Lambek–Grishin calculus into an extension of the nonassociative Lambek calculus with negation. The embedding is based on the De Morgan interpretation of the dual Grishin connectives.

This paper presents a simple and intuitive syntax for proof nets of the multiplicative cyclic fragment (McyLL) of linear logic (LL). The main technical achievement of this work is to propose a correctness criterion that allows for sequentialization (recovering a proof from a proof net) for all McyLL proof nets, including those containing cut links. This is achieved by adapting the idea of contractibility (originally introduced by Danos to give a quadratic time procedure for proof nets correctness) to cyclic LL. This paper also gives a characterization of McyLL proof nets for Lambek Calculus and thus a geometrical (i.e., non-inductive) way to parse phrases or sentences by means of Lambek proof nets.

An exact truthmaker for A is a state which, as well as guaranteeing A’s truth, is wholly relevant to it. States with parts irrelevant to whether A is true do not count as exact truthmakers for A. Giving semantics in this way produces a very unusual consequence relation, on which conjunctions do not entail their conjuncts. This feature makes the resulting logic highly unusual. In this paper, we set out formal semantics for exact truthmaking and characterise the resulting notion of entailment, showing that it is compact and decidable. We then investigate the effect of various restrictions on the semantics. We also formulate a sequent-style proof system for exact entailment and give soundness and completeness results.

In this paper, I motivate a cut free sequent calculus for classical logic with first order quantification, allowing for singular terms free of existential import. Along the way, I motivate a criterion for rules designed to answer Prior’s question about what distinguishes rules for logical concepts, like conjunction from apparently similar rules for putative concepts like Prior’s tonk, and I show that the rules for the quantifiers—and the existence predicate—satisfy that condition.