Taking Bi-Intuitionistic Logic First-Order: A Proof-Theoretic Investigation via Polytree Sequents

Research output: Contribution to book/Conference proceedings/Anthology/ReportConference contributionContributedpeer-review

Contributors

Abstract

It is well-known that extending the Hilbert axiomatic system for first-order intuitionistic logic with an exclusion operator, that is dual to implication, collapses the domains of models into a constant domain. This makes it an interesting problem to find a sound and complete proof system for first-order bi-intuitionistic logic with non-constant domains that is also conservative over first-order intuitionistic logic. We solve this problem by presenting the first sound and complete proof system for first-order bi-intuitionistic logic with increasing domains. We formalize our proof system as a polytree sequent calculus (a notational variant of nested sequents), and prove that it enjoys cut-elimination and is conservative over first-order intuitionistic logic. A key feature of our calculus is an explicit eigenvariable context, which allows us to control precisely the scope of free variables in a polytree structure. Semantically this context can be seen as encoding a notion of Scott's existence predicate for intuitionistic logic. This turns out to be crucial to avoid the collapse of domains and to prove the completeness of our proof system. The explicit consideration of the variable context in a formula sheds light on a previously overlooked dependency between the residuation principle and the existence predicate in the first-order setting, which may help to explain the difficulty in designing a sound and complete proof system for first-order bi-intuitionistic logic.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication33rd EACSL Annual Conference on Computer Science Logic (CSL 2025)
EditorsJörg Endrullis, Sylvain Schmitz
PublisherSchloss Dagstuhl- Leibniz-Zentrum fur Informatik GmbH, Dagstuhl Publishing
Pages41:1-41:23
ISBN (electronic)9783959773621
Publication statusPublished - 3 Feb 2025
Peer-reviewedYes

Publication series

SeriesLeibniz international proceedings in informatics : LIPIcs
Volume326
ISSN1868-8969

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0003-3214-0828/work/199216620
Scopus 85217370339

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Keywords

  • Bi-intuitionistic, Conservativity, Cut-elimination, Domain, First-order, Polytree, Proof theory, Reachability, Sequent