Complexity function and complexity of validity of modal and superintuitionistic propositional logics

Abstract

Abstract 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.