Relevant Logic Research Articles

Classifying material implications over minimal logic

The so-called paradoxes of material implication have motivated the development of many non-classical logics over the years, such as relevance logics, paraconsistent logics, fuzzy logics and so on. In this note, we investigate some of these paradoxes and classify them, over minimal logic. We provide proofs of equivalence and semantic models separating the paradoxes where appropriate. A number of equivalent groups arise, all of which collapse with unrestricted use of double negation elimination. Interestingly, the principle ex falso quodlibet, and several weaker principles, turn out to be distinguishable, giving perhaps supporting motivation for adopting minimal logic as the ambient logic for reasoning in the possible presence of inconsistency.

Sugihara algebras and Sugihara monoids: Multisorted dualities

AbstractThe authors developed in a recent paper natural dualities for finitely generated quasivarieties of Sugihara algebras. They thereby identified the admissibility algebras for these quasivarieties which, via the Test Spaces Method devised by Cabrer et al., give access to a viable method for studying admissible rules within relevance logic, specifically for extensions of the deductive system R-mingle.This paper builds on the work already done on the theory of natural dualities for Sugihara algebras. Its purpose is to provide an integrated suite of multisorted duality theorems of a uniform type, encompassing finitely generated quasivarieties and varieties of both Sugihara algebras and Sugihara monoids, and embracing both the odd and the even cases. The overarching theoretical framework of multisorted duality theory developed here leads on to amenable representations of free algebras. More widely, it provides a springboard to further applications.

A Relevant Logic of Questions

This paper introduces the inquisitive extension of R, denoted as InqR, which is a relevant logic of questions based on the logic R as the background logic of declaratives. A semantics for InqR is developed, and it is shown that this semantics is, in a precisely defined sense, dual to Routley-Meyer semantics for R. Moreover, InqR is axiomatized and completeness of the axiomatic system is established. The philosophical interpretation of the duality between Routley-Meyer semantics and the semantics for InqR is also discussed.

Truthmaker Semantics for Relevant Logic

I develop and defend a truthmaker semantics for the relevant logic R. The approach begins with a simple philosophical idea and develops it in various directions, so as to build a technically adequate relevant semantics. The central philosophical idea is that truths are true in virtue of specific states. Developing the idea formally results in a semantics on which truthmakers are relevant to what they make true. A very natural notion of conditionality is added, giving us relevant implication. I then investigate ways to add conjunction, disjunction, and negation; and I discuss how to justify contraposition and excluded middle within a truthmaker semantics.

The Collapse Argument Reconsidered

According to Beall and Restall’s logical pluralism, classical logic, relevant logic, and intuitionistic logic are all correct. On this version of logical pluralism, logic is considered to be normative, in the sense that someone who accepts the truth of the premises of a valid argument, is bound to accept the conclusion. So-called collapse arguments are designed to show the incompatibility of the simultaneous acceptance of logical pluralism and the normativity of logic. Caret, however, by proposing logical contextualism, and Blake-Turner and Russell by proposing telic pluralism, have sought to nullify the collapse problem. In the present article, after setting out these two approaches to the collapse problem, we argue that by using the concept of the ‘rationality of beliefs’ in order to frame the canonical purpose of logic, it can be demonstrated that if logical contextualism and telic pluralism are considered as philosophically significant logical pluralisms, a refined version of the collapse argument is still a threat for both of these kinds of logical pluralism.

Putting the stars in the their places

This paper presents a new semantics for the weak relevant logic DW that makes the role of the infamous Routley star more explicable. Central to this rewriting is combining aspects of both the American and Australian plan for understanding negations in relevance logics.

Non-Boolean classical relevant logics I

Relevant logics have traditionally been viewed as paraconsistent. This paper shows that this view of relevant logics is wrong. It does so by showing forth a logic which extends classical logic, yet satisfies the Entailment Theorem as well as the variable sharing property. In addition it has the same S4-type modal feature as the original relevant logic E as well as the same enthymematical deduction theorem. The variable sharing property was only ever regarded as a necessary property for a logic to have in order for it to not validate the so-called paradoxes of implication. The Entailment Theorem on the other hand was regarded as both necessary and sufficient. This paper shows that the latter theorem also holds for classical logic, and so cannot be regarded as a sufficient property for blocking the paradoxes. The concept of suppression is taken up, but shown to be properly weaker than that of variable sharing.

The nature of entailment: an informational approach

In this paper we elaborate a conception of entailment based on what we call the Ackermann principle, which explicates valid entailment through a logical connection between (sets of) sentences depending on their informational content. We reconstruct Dunn’s informational semantics for entailment on the basis of Restall’s approach, with assertion and denial as two independent (primary) speech acts, by introducing the notion of a ‘position description’. We show how the machinery of position descriptions can effectively be used to define the positive and the negative information carried by sentences of a given language and to present a formalized version of the Ackermann principle as an inclusion relationship between the informational contents of the conclusions and the premises of a valid entailment. Being so interpreted, the entailment relation exhibits certain properties, including the property of transitivity (and, more generally, admissibility of the cut rule). Whereas properties such as Anderson and Belnap’s variable sharing property or Parry’s proscriptive principle are normally presented as imposing a relevance requirement on valid entailment, the suggested formalization of the Ackermann principle supports all of Gentzen’s structural rules, including weakening, a rule that is normally given up in sequent-style proof systems for relevance logics. In this way we propose an Ackermann-inspired explication of the nature of entailment as a relation between the informational contents of sentences.

A logic of hypothetical conjunction

Abstract A binary connective that can be read as a matching conjunction for conditional connectives found in many conditional logics is considered. The most natural way to read this connective is often as a conjunction and yet, hypothetically, considered to hold of a state of affairs that could be obtained under the hypothesis. The connective can be given an intensional semantics extending a standard semantics of conditional logic that uses propositionally indexed families of binary relations on possible worlds. This semantics is determined by an adjoint relationship between the operations supporting the semantics of the conditional and the new conjunction. The semantics of the hypothetical conjunction connective subsumes the semantics, supported by a ternary relation semantics, of the fusion connective that arises in connection with substructural and relevant logics, and therefore subsumes a number of other forms of conjunction. A number of applications of the hypothetical conjunction connective are discussed, including generalized forms of resource reasoning used in computer science applications.

Sugihara algebras: Admissibility algebras via the test spaces method

This paper studies finitely generated quasivarieties of Sugihara algebras. These quasivarieties provide complete algebraic semantics for certain propositional logics associated with the relevant logic R-mingle. The motivation for the paper comes from the study of admissible rules. Recent earlier work by the present authors, jointly with Freisberg and Metcalfe, laid the theoretical foundations for a feasible approach to this problem for a range of logics—the Test Spaces Method. The method, based on natural duality theory, provides an algorithm to obtain the algebra of minimum size on which admissibility of sets of rules can be tested. (In the most general case a set of such algebras may be needed rather than just one.) The method enables us to identify this ‘admissibility algebra’ for each quasivariety of Sugihara algebras which is generated by an algebra whose underlying lattice is a finite chain. To achieve our goals, it was first necessary to develop a (strong) duality for each of these quasivarieties. The dualities promise also to provide a valuable new tool for studying the structure of Sugihara algebras more widely.

CUT AND GAMMA I: PROPOSITIONAL AND CONSTANT DOMAIN R

AbstractThe main object of this article is to give two novel proofs of the admissibility of Ackermann’s rule (γ) for the propositional relevant logic R. The results are established as corollaries of cut elimination for systems of tableaux for R. Cut elimination, in turn, is established both nonconstructively (as a corollary of completeness) and constructively (using Gentzen-like methods). The extensibility of the techniques is demonstrated by showing that (γ) is admissible for RQ* (R with constant domain quantifiers). The status of the admissibility of (γ) for RQ* was, to the best of the author’s knowledge, an open problem. Further extensions of these results will be explored in the sequel(s).

Tracking reasons with extensions of relevant logics

Abstract In relevant logics, necessary truths need not imply each other. In justification logic, necessary truths need not all be justified by the same reason. There is an affinity to these two approaches that suggests their pairing will provide good logics for tracking reasons in a fine-grained way. In this paper, I will show how to extend relevant logics with some of the basic operators of justification logic in order to track justifications or reasons. I will define and study three kinds of frames for these logics. For the first kind of frame, I show soundness and highlight a difficulty in proving completeness. This motivates two alternative kinds of frames, with respect to which completeness results are obtained. Axioms to strengthen the justification logic portions of these logics are considered. I close by developing an analogy between the dot operator of justification logic and theory fusion in relevant logics.

Implicational Logic, Relevance, and Refutability

The goal of this paper is to analyse Implicational Relevance Logic from the point of view of refutability. We also correct an inaccuracy in our paper “The RM paraconsistent refutation system” (DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12775/LLP.2009.005 ).

A plea for KR

There is a strong case to be made for thinking that an obscure logic, KR, is better than classical logic and better than any relevant logic. The argument for KR over relevant logics is that KR counts disjunctive syllogism valid, and this is the biggest complaint about relevant logics. The argument for KR over classical logic depends on the normativity of logic and the paradoxes of implication. The paradoxes of implication are taken by relevant logicians to justify relevant logic, but considerations on the normativity of logic show that only some of the paradoxes of implication are genuine. KR avoids all the genuine paradoxes of implication, unlike classical logic. Overall, KR avoids the genuine paradoxes of implication and avoids the major objection to relevant logics. This combination of features provides strong reason to give KR a place in the conversation about the right logic(s).

Categories of models of R-mingle

We give a new Esakia-style duality for the category of Sugihara monoids based on the Davey-Werner natural duality for lattices with involution, and use this duality to greatly simplify a construction due to Galatos-Raftery of Sugihara monoids from certain enrichments of their negative cones. Our method of obtaining this simplification is to transport the functors of the Galatos-Raftery construction across our duality, obtaining a vastly more transparent presentation on duals. Because our duality extends Dunn's relational semantics for the logic R-mingle to a categorical equivalence, this also explains the Dunn semantics and its relationship with the more usual Routley-Meyer semantics for relevant logics.

Resource semantics

The Logic of Bunched Implications (BI) was introduced by O'Hearn and Pym. The original presentation of BI emphasised its role as a system for formal logic (broadly in the tradition of relevant logic) that has some interesting properties, combining a clean proof theory, including a categorical interpretation, with a simple truth-functional semantics. BI quickly found significant applications in program verification and program analysis, chiefly through a specific theory of BI that is commonly known as 'Separation Logic'. We survey the state of work in bunched logics - which, by now, is a quite large family of systems, including modal and epistemic logics and logics for layered graphs - in such a way as to organize the ideas into a coherent (semantic) picture with a strong interpretation in terms of resources. One such picture can be seen as deriving from an interpretation of BI's semantics in terms of resources, and this view provides a basis for a systematic interpretation of the family of bunched logics, including modal, epistemic, layered graph, and process-theoretic variants, in terms of resources. We explain the basic ideas of resource semantics, including comparisons with Linear Logic and ideas from economics and physics. We include discussions of BI's λ-calculus, of Separation Logic, and of an approach to distributed systems modelling based on resource semantics.

Two Infinite Sequences of Pre-Maximal Extensions of the Relevant Logic E

The only maximal extension of the logic of relevant entailment E is the classical logic CL. A logic L ⊆ [E,CL] called pre-maximal if and only if L is a coatom in the interval [E,CL]. We present two denumerable infinite sequences of premaximal extensions of the logic E. Note that for the relevant logic R there exist exactly three pre-maximal logics, i.e. coatoms in the interval [R,CL].

Stoic Sequent Logic and Proof Theory

This paper contends that Stoic logic (i.e. Stoic analysis) deserves more attention from contemporary logicians. It sets out how, compared with contemporary propositional calculi, Stoic analysis is closest to methods of backward proof search for Gentzen-inspired substructural sequent logics, as they have been developed in logic programming and structural proof theory, and produces its proof search calculus in tree form. It shows how multiple similarities to Gentzen sequent systems combine with intriguing dissimilarities that may enrich contemporary discussion. Much of Stoic logic appears surprisingly modern: a recursively formulated syntax with some truth-functional propositional operators; analogues to cut rules, axiom schemata and Gentzen’s negation-introduction rules; an implicit variable-sharing principle and deliberate rejection of Thinning and avoidance of paradoxes of implication. These latter features mark the system out as a relevance logic, where the absence of duals for its left and right introduction rules puts it in the vicinity of McCall’s connexive logic. Methodologically, the choice of meticulously formulated meta-logical rules in lieu of axiom and inference schemata absorbs some structural rules and results in an economical, precise and elegant system that values decidability over completeness.

Simple Axiomatizations for Pretabular Classical Relevance Logics

KR is Anderson and Belnap’s relevance logic R with the addition of the axiom of EFQ: $$ (p \,\, \& \sim p) \rightarrow q$$. Since KR is relevantistic as to implication but classical as to negation, it has been dubbed, among many others, a ‘classical relevance logic.’ For KR, there have been known so far just two pretabular normal extensions. For these pretabular logics, no simple axiomatizations have yet been presented. In this paper, we offer some and show that they do the job. We also introduce some Routley–Meyer semantic conditions for these axioms. All these may facilitate realizing our desire to discover other classical pretabular extensions over KR, if such extensions exist.

Non-transitive relevant implication corresponding to classical logic consequence

In this paper we first develop a logic independent account of relevant implication. We propose a stipulative denition of what it means for a multiset of premises to relevantly L-imply a multiset of conclusions, where L is a Tarskian consequence relation: the premises relevantly imply the conclusions iff there is an abstraction of the pair <premises, conclusions> such that the abstracted premises L-imply the abstracted conclusions and none of the abstracted premises or the abstracted conclusions can be omitted while still maintaining valid L-consequence. Subsequently we apply this denition to the classical logic (CL) consequence relation to obtain NTR-consequence, i.e. the relevant CL-consequence relation in our sense, and develop a sequent calculus that is sound and complete with regard to relevant CL-consequence. We present a sound and complete sequent calculus for NTR. In a next step we add rules for an object language relevant implication to thesequent calculus. The object language implication reflects exactly the NTR-consequence relation. One can see the resulting logic NTR-> as a relevant logic in the traditional sense of the word. By means of a translation to the relevant logic R, we show that the presented logic NTR is very close to relevance logics in the Anderson-Belnap-Dunn-Routley-Meyer tradition. However, unlike usual relevant logics, NTR is decidable for the full language, Disjunctive Syllogism (A and ~AvB relevantly imply B) and Adjunction (A and B relevantly imply A&B) are valid, and neither Modus Ponens nor the Cut rule are admissible.