Heinrich Wansing

The present note contains a critical discussion of the methodology of paraconsistent logic in general and “the central optimisation problem of paraconsistent logics” in particular. It is argued that there exist several reasons not to consider classical logic as the reference logic for developing systems of paraconsistent logic, and it is suggested to weaken a certain maximality condition that may be seen as essential for “optimisation”, which is a methodology in the tradition of Newton da Costa. It is argued that the guiding motivation for the development of paraconsistent logics should be neither epistemological nor ontological, but informational. Moreover, it is pointed out that there are other notions of maximality and other methodologies. A methodology due to Graham Priest and Richard Routley and another methodology that focuses on a minimal shrinkage of expressiveness relative to a given reference logic are considered in some detail.

In this paper we study logical bilateralism understood as a theory of two primitive derivability relations, namely provability and refutability, in a language devoid of a primitive strong negation and without a falsum constant, $\bot $, and a verum constant, $\top $. There is thus no negation that toggles between provability and refutability, and there are no primitive constants that are used to define an “implies falsity” negation and a “co-implies truth” co-negation. This reduction of expressive power notwithstanding, there remains some interaction between provability and refutability due to the presence of (i) a conditional and the refutability condition of conditionals and (ii) a co-implication and the provability condition of co-implications. Moreover, assuming a hyperconnexive understanding of refuting conditionals and a dual understanding of proving co-implications, neither non-trivial negation inconsistency nor hyperconnexivity is lost for unary negation connectives definable by means of certain surrogates of falsum and verum. Whilst a critical attitude towards $\bot $ and $\top $ can be justified by problematic aspects of the Brouwer-Heyting-Kolmogorov interpretation of the logical operations for these constants, the aim to reduce the availability of a toggling negation and observations on undefinability may also give further reasons to abandon $\bot $ and $\top $.

Connexive logic has room for two pairs of universal and particular quantifiers: one pair, |$\forall $| and |$\exists $|⁠, are standard quantifiers; the other pair, |$\mathbb{A}$| and |$\mathbb{E}$|⁠, are unorthodox, but we argue, are well-motivated in the context of connexive logic. Both non-standard quantifiers have been introduced previously, but in the context of connexive logic they have a natural semantic and proof-theoretic place, and plausible natural language readings. The results are logics that are negation inconsistent but non-trivial.

A theory of substructural negations as impossibility and as unnecessity based on bi-intuitionistic logic, also known as Heyting-Brouwer logic, has been developed by Takuro Onishi. He notes two problems for that theory and offers the identification of the two negations as a solution to both problems. The first problem is the lack of a structural rule corresponding with double negation elimination for negation as impossibility, DNE, and the second problem is a lack of correspondence between certain sequents and a characterizing frame property. While the identification of negation as impossibility and negation as unnecessity does solve Onishi’s problems, in general it nevertheless seems desirable to keep the two notions separate. The present paper addresses the first problem by introducing a reformulation of Onishi’s display sequent calculus in a language of sequents that incorporates Boolean negation. Instead of identifying negation as impossibility and negation as unnecessity, a notion of weak frame correspondence is defined. It is observed that DNE weakly corresponds with a certain frame property, and two structural sequent rules are presented that together also weakly correspond with that frame property and allow one to derive DNE. Moreover, the reformulated display calculus has an independent motivation by considerations on proof-theoretic semantics.

We present a logic which deals with connexive exclusion. Exclusion (also called “co-implication”) is considered to be a propositional connective dual to the connective of implication. Similarly to implication, exclusion turns out to be non-connexive in both classical and intuitionistic logics, in the sense that it does not satisfy certain principles that express such connexivity. We formulate these principles for connexive exclusion, which are in some sense dual to the well-known Aristotle’s and Boethius’ theses for connexive implication. A logical system in a language containing exclusion and negation can be called a logic of connexive exclusion if and only if it obeys these principles, and, in addition, the connective of exclusion in it is asymmetric, thus being different from a simple mutual incompatibility of propositions. We will develop a certain approach to such a logic of connexive exclusion based on a semantic justification of the connective in question. Our paradigm logic of connexive implication will be the connexive logic \({\textsf{C}}\), and exactly like this logic the logic of connexive exclusion turns out to be contradictory though not trivial.

The topic of identity of proofs was put on the agenda of general (or structural) proof theory at an early stage. The relevant question is: When are the differences between two distinct proofs (understood as linguistic entities, proof figures) of one and the same formula so inessential that it is justified to identify the two proofs? The paper addresses another question: When are the differences between two distinct formulas so inessential that these formulas admit of identical proofs? The question appears to be especially natural if the idea of working with more than one kind of derivations is taken seriously. If a distinction is drawn between proofs and disproofs (or refutations) as primitive entities, it is quite conceivable that a proof of one formula amounts to a disproof of another formula, and vice versa. A notion of inherited identity of derivations is introduced for derivations in a cut-free sequent system for Almukdad and Nelson’s constructive paraconsistent logic N4 with strong negation. The notion is obtained by identifying sequent rules the application of which has no effect on the identity of derivations. Then the notion of inherited identity is used to define a bilateralist notion of synonymy between formulas, which is a relation drawing more fine-grained distinctions between formulas than strong equivalence.

It is widely accepted that there is a clear sense in which the first-order paraconsistent constructive logic with strong negation of Almukdad and Nelson, QN4, is more constructive than intuitionistic first-order logic, QInt. While QInt and QN4 both possess the disjunction property and the existence property as characteristics of constructiveness (or constructivity), QInt lacks certain features of constructiveness enjoyed by QN4, namely the constructible falsity property and the dual of the existence property. This paper deals with the constructiveness of the contra-classical, connexive, paraconsistent, and contradictory non-trivial first-order logic QC, which is a connexive variant of QN4. It is shown that there is a sense in which QC is even more constructive than QN4. The argument focuses on a problem that is mirror-inverted to Raymond Smullyan’s drinker paradox, namely the invalidity of what will be called the drinker truism and its dual in QN4 (and QInt), and on a version of the Brouwer-Heyting-Kolmogorov interpretation of the logical operations that treats proofs and disproofs on a par. The validity of the drinker truism and its dual together with the greater constructiveness of QC in comparison to QN4 may serve as further motivation for the study of connexive logics and suggests that constructive logic is connexive and contradictory (the latter understood as being negation inconsistent).

Over the past ten years, the community researching connexive logics is rapidly growing and a number of papers have been published. However, when it comes to the terminology used in connexive logic, it seems to be not without problems. In this introduction, we aim at making a contribution towards both unifying and reducing the terminology. We hope that this can help making it easier to survey and access the field from outside the community of connexive logicians. Along the way, we will make clear the context to which the papers in this special issue on Frontiers of Connexive Logic belong and contribute.

The book presents a thoroughly elaborated logical theory of generalized truth-values understood as subsets of some established set of truth values. After elucidating the importance of the very notion of a truth value in logic and philosophy, we examine some possible ways of generalizing this notion. The useful four-valued logic of first-degree entailment by Nuel Belnap and the notion of a bilattice constitute the basis for further generalizations. By doing so we elaborate the idea of a multilattice, and most notably, a trilattice of truth values – a specific algebraic structure with information ordering and two distinct logical orderings, one for truth and another for falsity. Each logical order not only induces its own logical vocabulary, but determines also its own entailment relation. We consider both semantic and syntactic ways of formalizing these relations and construct various logical calculi.

In this paper we will consider the existing notions of bilateralism in the context of proof-theoretic semantics and propose, based on our understanding of bilateralism, an extension to logical multilateralism. This approach differs from what has been proposed under this name before in that we do not consider multiple speech acts as the core of such a theory but rather multiple consequence relations. We will argue that for this aim the most beneficial proof-theoretical realization is to use sequent calculi with multiple sequent arrows satisfying some specific conditions, which we will lay out in this paper. We will unfold our ideas with the help of a case study in logical tetralateralism and present an extension of Almukdad and Nelson’s propositional constructive four-valued logic by unary operations of meaningfulness and nonsensicality. We will argue that in sequent calculi with multiple sequent arrows it is possible to maintain certain features that are desirable if we assume an understanding of the meaning of connectives in the spirit of proof-theoretic semantics. The use of multiple sequent arrows will be justified by the presence of congruentiality-breaking unary connectives.

Despite the tendency to be otherwise, some non-classical logics are known to validate formulas that are invalid in classical logic. A subclass of such systems even possesses pairs of a formula and its negation as theorems, without becoming trivial. How should these provable contradictions be understood? The present paper aims to shed light on aspects of this phenomenon by taking as samples the constructive connexive logic C, which is obtained by a simple modification of a system of constructible falsity, namely N4, as well as its non-constructive extension C3. For these systems, various observations concerning provable contradictions are made, using mainly a proof-theoretic approach. The topics covered in this paper include: how new contradictions are found from parts of provable contradictions; how to characterise provable contradictions in C3 that are constructive; how contradictions can be seen from the relative viewpoint of strong implication; and as an appendix an attempt at generating provable contradictions in C3.

We consider an approach to propositional synonymy in proof-theoretic semantics that is defined with respect to a bilateral G3-style sequent calculus \(\mathtt{SC2Int}\) for the bi-intuitionistic logic \(\mathtt{2Int}\). A distinctive feature of \(\mathtt{SC2Int}\) is that it makes use of two kind of sequents, one representing proofs, the other representing refutations. The structural rules of \(\mathtt{SC2Int}\), in particular its cut rules, are shown to be admissible. Next, interaction rules are defined that allow transitions from proofs to refutations, and vice versa, mediated through two different negation connectives, the well-known implies-falsity negation and the less well-known coimplies-truth negation of \(\mathtt{2Int}\). By assuming that the interaction rules have no impact on the identity of derivations, the concept of inherited identity between derivations in \(\mathtt{SC2Int}\) is introduced and the notions of positive and negative synonymy of formulas are defined. Several examples are given of distinct formulas that are either positively or negatively synonymous. It is conjectured that the two conditions cannot be satisfied simultaneously.

In this introduction to the special issue “40 years of FDE”, we offer an overview of the field and put the papers included in the special issue into perspective. More specifically, we first present various semantics and proof systems for FDE, and then survey some expansions of FDE by adding various operators starting with constants. We then turn to unary and binary connectives, which are classified in a systematic manner. First-order FDE is also briefly revisited, and we conclude by listing some open problems for future research.

In this paper, bi-intuitionistic multilattice logic, which is a combination of multilattice logic and the bi-intuitionistic logic also known as Heyting–Brouwer logic, is introduced as a Gentzen-type sequent calculus. A Kripke semantics is developed for this logic, and the completeness theorem with respect to this semantics is proved via theorems for embedding this logic into bi-intuitionistic logic. The logic proposed is an extension of first-degree entailment logic and can be regarded as a bi-intuitionistic variant of the original classical multilattice logic determined by the algebraic structure of multilattices. Similar completeness and embedding results are also shown for another logic called bi-intuitionistic connexive multilattice logic, obtained by replacing the connectives of intuitionistic implication and co-implication with their connexive variants.

In this paper, first some propositional conditional logics based on Belnap and Dunn’s useful four-valued logic of first-degree entailment are introduced semantically, which are then turned into systems of weakly and unrestrictedly connexive conditional logic. The general frame semantics for these logics makes use of a set of allowable (or admissible) extension/antiextension pairs. Next, sound and complete tableau calculi for these logics are presented. Moreover, an expansion of the basic conditional connexive logics by a constructive implication is considered, which gives an opportunity to discuss recent related work, motivated by the combination of indicative and counterfactual conditionals. Tableau calculi for the basic constructive connexive conditional logics are defined and shown to be sound and complete with respect to their semantics. This semantics has to ensure a persistence property with respect to the preorder that is used to interpret the constructive implication.

Science today is an international business, of course, and there has hardly ever been a partition wall between the logical work in Poland and Germany. However, apart from long lasting personal scientific contacts there are good reasons to further intensify the relations between the German and the Polish Community of Logic and Logical Philosophy. So it was only natural to think about bringing them together at a scientific event in a friendly environment. This idea was carried out as a common initiative of the Polish Association for Logic and Theory of Science (PTL) and of the German based Society for Analytic Philosophy (GAP). The First German-Polish Workshop on Logic and Logical Philosophy was held in Bachotek/Poland from September 10.–13., 1995. It was organized by Kazimierz Świrydowicz (PTL), Heinrich Wansing (GAP) and Max Urchs (both). This part of the present volume of Logic and Logical Philosophy is not the proceedings of the workshop. On one hand, not all the papers presented at the workshop (see previous page for the programme) are attended to this volume. Due to their more technical character, the contributions of Gregory Restall, Tomasz Skura, Heinrich Wansing, Andrzej Wroński and others will appear in the next number of Reports on Mathematical Logic. Some papers included in this issue were changed considerably for publication. On the other hand, colleagues who intended to join the workshop but had to cancel for some reason were invited to submit their material, too. We would like to thank the editors of both journals very kindly for their suggestion to publish the submitted material

The famous “slingshot argument” developed by Church, Gödel, Quine and Davidson is often considered to be a formally strict proof of the Fregean conception that all true sentences, as well as all false ones, have one and the same denotation, namely their corresponding truth value: the true or the false . In this paper we examine the analysis of the slingshot argument by means of a non-Fregean logic undertaken recently by A.Wóitowicz and put to the test her claim that the slingshot argument is in fact circular and presupposes what it intends to prove. We show that this claim is untenable. Nevertheless, the language of non-Fregean logic can serve as a useful tool for representing the slingshot argument, and several versions of the slingshot argument in non-Fregean logics are presented. In particular, a new version of the slingshot argument is presented, which can be circumvented neither by an appeal to a Russellian theory of definite descriptions nor by resorting to an analogous “Russellian” theory of λ–terms.

In Belnap's useful 4-valued logic, the set 2 = {T, F} of classical truth values is generalized to the set 4 = (2) = {Ø, {T}, {F}, {T, F}}. In the present paper, we argue in favor of extending this process to the set 16 = ᵍ (4) (and beyond). It turns out that this generalization is well-motivated and leads from the bilattice FOUR₂ with an information and a truth-and-falsity ordering to another algebraic structure, namely the trilattice SIXTEEN₃ with an information ordering together with a truth ordering and a (distinct) falsity ordering. Interestingly, the logics generated separately by the algebraic operations under the truth order and under the falsity order in SIXTEEN₃ coincide with the logic of FOUR₂, namely first degree entailment. This observation may be taken as a further indication of the significance of first degree entailment. In the present setting, however, it becomes rather natural to consider also logical systems in the language obtained by combining the vocabulary of the logic of the truth order and the falsity order. We semantically define the logics of the two orderings in the extended language and in both cases axiomatize a certain fragment comprising three unary operations: a negation, an involution, and their combination. We also suggest two other definitions of logics in the full language, including a bi-consequence system. In other words, in addition to presenting first degree entailment as a useful 16-valued logic, we define further useful 16-valued logics for reasoning about truth and (non-)falsity. We expect these logics to be an interesting and useful instrument in information processing, especially when we deal with a net of hierarchically interconnected computers. We also briefly discuss Arieli's and Avron's notion of a logical bilattice and state a number of open problems for future research