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Modal operators and functional completeness, II1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2014

S. K. Thomason*
Affiliation:
Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada V5A 1S6

Extract

In the Kripke semantics for propositional modal logic, a frame W = (W, ≺) represents a set of “possible worlds” and a relation of “accessibility” between possible worlds. With respect to a fixed frame W, a proposition is represented by a subset of W (regarded as the set of worlds in which the proposition is true), and an n-ary connective (i.e. a way of forming a new proposition from an ordered n-tuple of given propositions) is represented by a function fw: (P(W))nP(W). Finally a state of affairs (i.e. a consistent specification whether or not each proposition obtains) is represented by an ultrafilter over W. {To avoid possible confusion, the reader should forget that some people prefer the term “states of affairs” for our “possible worlds”.}

In a broader sense, an n-ary connective is represented by an n-ary operatorf = {fwW ∈ Fr}, where Fr is the class of all frames and each fw: (P(W))nP(W). A connective is modal if it corresponds to a formula of propositional modal logic. A connective C is coherent if whether C(P1,…, Pn) is true in a possible world depends only upon which modal combinations of P1,…,Pn are true in that world. (A modal combination of P1,…,Pn is the result of applying a modal connective to P1,…, Pn.) A connective C is strongly coherent if whether C(P1, …, Pn) obtains in a state of affairs depends only upon which modal combinations of P1,…, Pn obtain in that state of affairs.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Symbolic Logic 1977

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Footnotes

1

This paper is an expanded version of one [4] contributed to the Fifth International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, London, Canada, August, 1975, and reports work supported in part by the National Research Council of Canada.

References

REFERENCES

[1]Bell, J. L. and Slomson, A. B., Models and ultraproducts, North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1969.Google Scholar
[2]Fine, Kit, Some connections between elementary and modal logic, Proceedings of the Third Scandinavian Logic Symposium (Kanger, Stig, Editor), North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1975.Google Scholar
[3]Massey, Gerald J., Understanding symbolic logic, Harper and Row, New York, 1970.Google Scholar
[4]Thomason, S. K., Modal operators and functional completeness, Fifth International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, London, Canada, 08, 1975.Google Scholar