The Logic of Uncertain Justifications

In Artemov?s Justification Logic, one can make statements interpreted as “t is evidence for the truth of formula F.” We propose a variant of this logic in which one can say “I have degree r of confidence that t is evidence for the truth of formula F.” After defining both an axiomatic approach and a semantics for this Logic of Uncertain Justifications, we will prove the usual soundness and completeness theorems.     

Reducing belief simpliciter to degrees of belief

Is it possible to give an explicit definition of belief (simpliciter) in terms of subjective probability, such that believed propositions are guaranteed to have a sufficiently high probability, and yet it is neither the case that belief is stripped of any of its usual logical properties, nor is it the case that believed propositions are bound to have probability 1? We prove the answer is ‘yes’, and that given some plausible logical postulates on belief that involve a contextual “cautiousness” threshold, there is but one way of determining the extension of the concept of belief that does the job. The qualitative concept of belief is not to be eliminated from scientific or philosophical discourse, rather, by reducing qualitative belief to assignments of resiliently high degrees of belief and a “cautiousness” threshold, qualitative and quantitative belief turn out to be governed by one unified theory that offers the prospects of a huge range of applications. Within that theory, logic and probability theory are not opposed to each other but go hand in hand.     

Evidence and plausibility in neighborhood structures

The intuitive notion of evidence has both semantic and syntactic features. In this paper, we develop an evidence logic for epistemic agents faced with possibly contradictory evidence from different sources. The logic is based on a neighborhood semantics, where a neighborhood N indicates that the agent has reason to believe that the true state of the world lies in N. Further notions of relative plausibility between worlds and beliefs based on the latter ordering are then defined in terms of this evidence structure, yielding our intended models for evidence-based beliefs. In addition, we also consider a second more general flavor, where belief and plausibility are modeled using additional primitive relations, and we prove a representation theorem showing that each such general model is a p-morphic image of an intended one. This semantics invites a number of natural special cases, depending on how uniform we make the evidence sets, and how coherent their total structure. We give a structural study of the resulting ‘uniform’ and ‘flat’ models. Our main result are sound and complete axiomatizations for the logics of all four major model classes with respect to the modal language of evidence, belief and safe belief. We conclude with an outlook toward logics for the dynamics of changing evidence, and the resulting language extensions and connections with logics of plausibility change.     

A modal logic framework for reasoning about comparative distances and topology

We propose and investigate a uniform modal logic framework for reasoning about topology and relative distance in metric and more general distance spaces, thus enabling the comparison and combination of logics from distinct research traditions such as Tarski’s S4 for topological closure and interior, conditional logics, and logics of comparative similarity. This framework is obtained by decomposing the underlying modal-like operators into first-order quantifier patterns. We then show that quite a powerful and natural fragment of the resulting first-order logic can be captured by one binary operator comparing distances between sets and one unary operator distinguishing between realised and limit distances (i.e., between minimum and infimum). Due to its greater expressive power, this logic turns out to behave quite differently from both S4 and conditional logics. We provide finite (Hilbert-style) axiomatisations and ExpTime-completeness proofs for the logics of various classes of distance spaces, in particular metric spaces. But we also show that the logic of the real line (and various other important metric spaces) is not recursively enumerable. This result is proved by an encoding of Diophantine equations.     

A note on “Extensional PERs”

In the paper “Extensional PERs” by P. Freyd, P. Mulry, G. Rosolini and D. Scott, a category C of “pointed complete extensional PERs” and computable maps is introduced to provide an instance of an algebraically compact category relative to a restricted class of functors. Algebraic compactness is a synthetic condition on a category which ensures solutions of recursive equations involving endofunctors of the category. We extend that result to include all internal functors on C when C is viewed as a full internal category of the effective topos. This is done using two general results: one about internal functors in general, and one about internal functors in the effective topos.     

Cut-free formulations for a quantified logic of here and there

A predicate extension SQHT⁼ of the logic of here-and-there was introduced by V. Lifschitz, D. Pearce, and A. Valverde to characterize strong equivalence of logic programs with variables and equality with respect to stable models. The semantics for this logic is determined by intuitionistic Kripke models with two worlds (here and there) with constant individual domain and decidable equality. Our sequent formulation has special rules for implication and for pushing negation inside formulas. The soundness proof allows us to establish that SQHT⁼ is a conservative extension of the logic of weak excluded middle with respect to sequents without positive occurrences of implication. The completeness proof uses a non-closed branch of a proof search tree. The interplay between rules for pushing negation inside and truth in the “there” (non-root) world of the resulting Kripke model can be of independent interest. We prove that existence is definable in terms of remaining connectives.     

Visible acyclic differential nets, Part I: Semantics

We give a geometric condition that characterizes the differential nets having a finitary interpretation in finiteness spaces: visible acyclicity. This is based on visible paths, an extension to differential nets of a class of paths we introduced in the framework of linear logic nets. The characterization is then carried out as follows: the differential nets having no visible cycles are exactly those whose interpretation is a finitary relation. Visible acyclicity discloses a new kind of correctness for the promotion rule of linear logic, which goes beyond sequent calculus correctness.     

Separating the basic logics of the basic recurrences

This paper shows that, even at the most basic level (namely, in combination with only ¬,∧,∨), the parallel, countable branching and uncountable branching recurrences of computability logic validate different principles.     

Interpretation of De Finetti coherence criterion in ?ukasiewicz Logic

De Finetti gave a natural definition of “coherent probability assessment” β:E→[0,1] of a set E={X₁,…,X_m} of “events” occurring in an arbitrary set W⊆[0,1]^E of “possible worlds”. In the particular case of yes-no events, (where W⊆{0,1}^E), Kolmogorov axioms can be derived from his criterion. While De Finetti’s approach to probability was logic-free, we construct a theory Θ in infinite-valued ?ukasiewicz propositional logic, and show: (i) a possible world of W is a valuation satisfying Θ, (ii) β is coherent iff it is a convex combination of valuations satisfying Θ, (iii) iff β agrees on E with a state of the Lindenbaum MV-algebra of Θ, (iv) iff for some Borel probability measure μ on W. Thus ?ukasiewicz semantics, MV-algebraic (finitely additive) states, and (countably additive) Borel probability measures provide a universal representation of coherent assessments of events occurring in any conceivable set of possible worlds.     

How much randomness is needed for statistics?

In algorithmic randomness, when one wants to define a randomness notion with respect to some non-computable measure λ, a choice needs to be made. One approach is to allow randomness tests to access the measure λ as an oracle (which we call the “classical approach”). The other approach is the opposite one, where the randomness tests are completely effective and do not have access to the information contained in λ (we call this approach “Hippocratic”). While the Hippocratic approach is in general much more restrictive, there are cases where the two coincide. The first author showed in 2010 that in the particular case where the notion of randomness considered is Martin-Löf randomness and the measure λ is a Bernoulli measure, classical randomness and Hippocratic randomness coincide. In this paper, we prove that this result no longer holds for other notions of randomness, namely computable randomness and stochasticity.     

Lindelöf spaces which are Menger, Hurewicz, Alster, productive, or D

We discuss relationships in Lindelöf spaces among the properties “Menger”, “Hurewicz”, “Alster”, “productive”, and “D”.     

Intuitionistic completeness of first-order logic

We constructively prove completeness for intuitionistic first-order logic, iFOL, showing that a formula is provable in iFOL if and only if it is uniformly valid in intuitionistic evidence semantics as defined in intuitionistic type theory extended with an intersection operator.     

Effectiveness in RPL, with applications to continuous logic

In this paper, we introduce a foundation for computable model theory of rational Pavelka logic (an extension of ?ukasiewicz logic) and continuous logic, and prove effective versions of some related theorems in model theory. We show how to reduce continuous logic to rational Pavelka logic. We also define notions of computability and decidability of a model for logics with computable, but uncountable, set of truth values; we show that provability degree of a formula with respect to a linear theory is computable, and use this to carry out an effective Henkin construction. Therefore, for any effectively given consistent linear theory in continuous logic, we effectively produce its decidable model. This is the best possible, since we show that the computable model theory of continuous logic is an extension of computable model theory of classical logic. We conclude with noting that the unique separable model of a separably categorical and computably axiomatizable theory (such as that of a probability space or an L^p Banach lattice) is decidable.     

Weighted norm inequalities, off-diagonal estimates and elliptic operators. Part I: General operator theory and weights

This is the first part of a series of four articles. In this work, we are interested in weighted norm estimates. We put the emphasis on two results of different nature: one is based on a good-λ inequality with two parameters and the other uses Calderón-Zygmund decomposition. These results apply well to singular “non-integral” operators and their commutators with bounded mean oscillation functions. Singular means that they are of order 0, “non-integral” that they do not have an integral representation by a kernel with size estimates, even rough, so that they may not be bounded on all Lp spaces for 1<p<∞. Pointwise estimates are then replaced by appropriate localized Lp-Lq estimates. We obtain weighted Lp estimates for a range of p that is different from (1,∞) and isolate the right class of weights. In particular, we prove an extrapolation theorem “à la Rubio de Francia” for such a class and thus vector-valued estimates.     

Observing,reporting, and deciding in networks of sentences

In prior work [7] we considered networks of agents who have knowledge bases in first order logic, and report facts to their neighbors that are in their common languages and are provable from their knowledge bases, in order to help a decider verify a single sentence. In report complete networks, the signatures of the agents and the links between agents are rich enough to verify any decider?s sentence that can be proved from the combined knowledge base. This paper introduces a more general setting where new observations may be added to knowledge bases and the decider must choose a sentence from a set of alternatives. We consider the question of when it is possible to prepare in advance a finite plan to generate reports within the network. We obtain conditions under which such a plan exists and is guaranteed to produce the right choice under any new observations.     

Lindelöf spaces which are indestructible, productive, or D

We discuss relationships in Lindelöf spaces among the properties “indestructible”, “productive”, “D”, and related properties.     

Totality in arena games

We tackle the problem of preservation of totality by composition in arena games. We first explain how this problem reduces to a finiteness theorem on what we call pointer structures, similar to the parity pointer functions of Harmer, Hyland & Melliès and the interaction sequences of Coquand. We discuss how this theorem relates to normalization of linear head reduction in simply-typed λ-calculus, leading us to a semantic realizability proof à la Kleene of our theorem. We then present another proof of a more combinatorial nature. Finally, we discuss the exact class of strategies to which our theorems apply.     

Dependence of variables construed as an atomic formula

We define a logic D capable of expressing dependence of a variable on designated variables only. Thus D has similar goals to the Henkin quantifiers of [4] and the independence friendly logic of [6] that it much resembles. The logic D achieves these goals by realizing the desired dependence declarations of variables on the level of atomic formulas. By [3] and [17], ability to limit dependence relations between variables leads to existential second order expressive power. Our D avoids some difficulties arising in the original independence friendly logic from coupling the dependence declarations with existential quantifiers. As is the case with independence friendly logic, truth of D is definable inside D. We give such a definition for D in the spirit of [11] and [2] and [1].