Nobel symposium 20. The changing chemistry of the oceans: Edited by David Dryssen and Daniel Jagner, 1972, Wiley Interscience Division, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York; Almqvist & Wiksell, Stockholm. 365 pp. £9.00

Abstract

Natural deduction systems for classical, intuitionistic and modal logics were deeply investigated by Prawitz [D. Prawitz, Natural Deduction: A Proof-theoretical Study, in: Stockholm Studies in Philosophy, vol. 3, Almqvist and Wiksell, Stockholm, 1965. Reprinted at: Dover Publications, Dover Books on Mathematics, 2006] from a proof-theoretical perspective. Prawitz proved weak normalization for classical logic only for a language without ∨, ∃ and with a restricted application of reduction ad absurdum. Reduction steps related to ∨, ∃ and classical negation bring about many problems solved only rather recently. For classical S5 modal logic, Prawitz defined a normalizable system, but for a language without ∨, ∃, ◊ and, for a propositional language without ◊, Medeiros [M.da P.N. Medeiros, A new S4 classical modal logic in natural deduction, Journal of Symbolic Logic 71 (3) (2006) 799–809] presented a normalizable system for classical S4. We can mention many cut-free Gentzen systems for S4, S5 and K45/K45D, some normalizable natural deduction systems for intuitionistic modal logics and one more for full classical S4, but not for full classical S5. Here our focus is on the definition of a classical and normalizable natural deduction system for S5, taking not only □ and ◊ as primitive symbols, but also all connectives and quantifiers, including classical negation, disjunction and the existential quantifier. The normalization procedure is based on the strategy proposed by Massi [C.D.B. Massi, Provas de normalizaçaõ para a lógica clássica, Ph.D. Thesis, Departamento de Filosofia, UNICAMP, Campinas, 1990] and Pereira and Massi [L.C. Pereira, C.D.B. Massi, Normalização para a lógica clássica, in: O que nos faz pensar, Cadernos de Filosofia da PUC-RJ, vol. 2, 1990, pp. 49–53] for first-order classical logic to cope with the combined use of classical negation, disjunction and the existential quantifier. Here we extend such results to deal with □ and ◊ too. The elimination rule for ◊ uses the notions of connection and of essentially modal formulas already proposed by Prawitz for the introduction of □. Beyond weak normalization, we also prove the subformula property for full S5.