From Fibring to Cryptofibring. A Solution to the Collapsing Problem

The semantic collapse problem is perhaps the main difficulty associated to the very powerful mechanism for combining logics known as fibring. In this paper we propose cryptofibred semantics as a generalization of fibred semantics, and show that it provides a solution to the collapsing problem. In particular, given that the collapsing problem is a special case of failure of conservativeness, we formulate and prove a sufficient condition for cryptofibring to yield a conservative extension of the logics being combined. For illustration, we revisit the example of combining intuitionistic and classical propositional logics. Mathematics Subject Classification (2000): 03B22 (03B35, 03G25, 03G30)