MODAL LOGICS OF METRIC SPACES

Abstract

AbstractIt is a classic result (McKinsey & Tarski, 1944; Rasiowa & Sikorski, 1963) that if we interpret modal diamond as topological closure, then the modal logic of any dense-in-itself metric space is the well-known modal system S4. In this paper, as a natural follow-up, we study the modal logic of an arbitrary metric space. Our main result establishes that modal logics arising from metric spaces form the following chain which is order-isomorphic (with respect to the ⊃ relation) to the ordinal ω + 3:$S4.Gr{z_1} \supset S4.Gr{z_2} \supset S4.Gr{z_3} \supset \cdots \,S4.Grz \supset S4.1 \supset S4.$It follows that the modal logic of an arbitrary metric space is finitely axiomatizable, has the finite model property, and hence is decidable.