Normalized natural deduction systems for some relevant logics I: The logic DW

Abstract

Fitch-style natural deduction was first introduced into relevant logic by Anderson in [1960], for the sentential logic E of entailment and its quantincational extension EQ. This was extended by Anderson and Belnap to the sentential relevant logics R and T and some of their fragments in [ENT1], and further extended to a wide range of sentential and quantified relevant logics by Brady in [1984]. This was done by putting conditions on the elimination rules, →E, ~E, ⋁E and ∃E, pertaining to the set of dependent hypotheses for formulae used in the application of the rule. Each of these rules were subjected to the same condition, this condition varying from logic to logic. These conditions, together with the set of natural deduction rules, precisely determine the particular relevant logic. Generally, this is a simpler representation of a relevant logic than the standard Routley-Meyer semantics, with its existential modelling conditions stated in terms of an otherwise arbitrary 3-place relation R, which is defined over a possibly infinite set of worlds. Readers are urged to refer to Brady [1984], if unfamiliar with the above natural deduction systems, but we will introduce in §2 a modified version in full detail.Natural deduction for classical logic was invented by Jaskowski and Gentzen, but it was Prawitz in [1965] who normalized natural deduction, streamlining its rules so as to allow a subformula property to be proved. (This key property ensures that each formula in the proof of a theorem is indeed a subformula of that theorem.)