In logic, a true/false decision problem is decidable if there exists an effective method for deriving the correct answer. Zeroth-order logic (propositional logic) is decidable, whereas first-order and higher-order logic are not. Logical systems are decidable if membership in their set of logically valid formulas (or theorems) can be effectively determined. A theory (set of sentences closed under logical consequence) in a fixed logical system is decidable if there is an effective method for determining whether arbitrary formulas are included in the theory. Many important problems are undecidable, that is, it has been proven that no effective method for determining membership (returning a correct answer after finite, though possibly very long, time in all cases) can exist for them.
Each logical system comes with both a syntactic component, which among other things determines the notion of provability, and a semantic component, which determines the notion of logical validity. The logically valid formulas of a system are sometimes called the theorems of the system, especially in the context of first-order logic where Gödel's completeness theorem establishes the equivalence of semantic and syntactic consequence. In other settings, such as linear logic, the syntactic consequence (provability) relation may be used to define the theorems of a system.
A logical system is decidable if there is an effective method for determining whether arbitrary formulas are theorems of the logical system. For example, propositional logic is decidable, because the truth-table method can be used to determine whether an arbitrary propositional formula is logically valid.
First-order logic is not decidable in general; in particular, the set of logical validities in any signature that includes equality and at least one other predicate with two or more arguments is not decidable. [1] Logical systems extending first-order logic, such as second-order logic and type theory, are also undecidable.
The validities of monadic predicate calculus with identity are decidable, however. This system is first-order logic restricted to those signatures that have no function symbols and whose relation symbols other than equality never take more than one argument.
Some logical systems are not adequately represented by the set of theorems alone. (For example, Kleene's logic has no theorems at all.) In such cases, alternative definitions of decidability of a logical system are often used, which ask for an effective method for determining something more general than just validity of formulas; for instance, validity of sequents, or the consequence relation {(Г, A) | Г ⊧ A} of the logic.
A theory is a set of formulas, often assumed to be closed under logical consequence. Decidability for a theory concerns whether there is an effective procedure that decides whether the formula is a member of the theory or not, given an arbitrary formula in the signature of the theory. The problem of decidability arises naturally when a theory is defined as the set of logical consequences of a fixed set of axioms.
There are several basic results about decidability of theories. Every (non-paraconsistent) inconsistent theory is decidable, as every formula in the signature of the theory will be a logical consequence of, and thus a member of, the theory. Every complete recursively enumerable first-order theory is decidable. An extension of a decidable theory may not be decidable. For example, there are undecidable theories in propositional logic, although the set of validities (the smallest theory) is decidable.
A consistent theory that has the property that every consistent extension is undecidable is said to be essentially undecidable. In fact, every consistent extension will be essentially undecidable. The theory of fields is undecidable but not essentially undecidable. Robinson arithmetic is known to be essentially undecidable, and thus every consistent theory that includes or interprets Robinson arithmetic is also (essentially) undecidable.
Examples of decidable first-order theories include the theory of real closed fields, and Presburger arithmetic, while the theory of groups and Robinson arithmetic are examples of undecidable theories.
Some decidable theories include (Monk 1976, p. 234): [2]
Methods used to establish decidability include quantifier elimination, model completeness, and the Łoś-Vaught test.
Some undecidable theories include (Monk 1976, p. 279): [2]
The interpretability method is often used to establish undecidability of theories. If an essentially undecidable theory T is interpretable in a consistent theory S, then S is also essentially undecidable. This is closely related to the concept of a many-one reduction in computability theory.
A property of a theory or logical system weaker than decidability is semidecidability. A theory is semidecidable if there is a well-defined method whose result, given an arbitrary formula, arrives as positive, if the formula is in the theory; otherwise, may never arrive at all; otherwise, arrives as negative. A logical system is semidecidable if there is a well-defined method for generating a sequence of theorems such that each theorem will eventually be generated. This is different from decidability because in a semidecidable system there may be no effective procedure for checking that a formula is not a theorem.
Every decidable theory or logical system is semidecidable, but in general the converse is not true; a theory is decidable if and only if both it and its complement are semi-decidable. For example, the set of logical validities V of first-order logic is semi-decidable, but not decidable. In this case, it is because there is no effective method for determining for an arbitrary formula A whether A is not in V. Similarly, the set of logical consequences of any recursively enumerable set of first-order axioms is semidecidable. Many of the examples of undecidable first-order theories given above are of this form.
Decidability should not be confused with completeness. For example, the theory of algebraically closed fields is decidable but incomplete, whereas the set of all true first-order statements about nonnegative integers in the language with + and × is complete but undecidable. Unfortunately, as a terminological ambiguity, the term "undecidable statement" is sometimes used as a synonym for independent statement.
As with the concept of a decidable set, the definition of a decidable theory or logical system can be given either in terms of effective methods or in terms of computable functions . These are generally considered equivalent per Church's thesis. Indeed, the proof that a logical system or theory is undecidable will use the formal definition of computability to show that an appropriate set is not a decidable set, and then invoke Church's thesis to show that the theory or logical system is not decidable by any effective method (Enderton 2001, pp. 206ff.).
Some games have been classified as to their decidability:
In mathematics and computer science, the Entscheidungsproblem is a challenge posed by David Hilbert and Wilhelm Ackermann in 1928. The problem asks for an algorithm that considers, as input, a statement and answers "yes" or "no" according to whether the statement is universally valid, i.e., valid in every structure satisfying the axioms.
First-order logic—also known as predicate logic, quantificational logic, and first-order predicate calculus—is a collection of formal systems used in mathematics, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science. First-order logic uses quantified variables over non-logical objects, and allows the use of sentences that contain variables, so that rather than propositions such as "Socrates is a man", one can have expressions in the form "there exists x such that x is Socrates and x is a man", where "there exists" is a quantifier, while x is a variable. This distinguishes it from propositional logic, which does not use quantifiers or relations; in this sense, propositional logic is the foundation of first-order logic.
Gödel's completeness theorem is a fundamental theorem in mathematical logic that establishes a correspondence between semantic truth and syntactic provability in first-order logic.
Mathematical logic is the study of formal logic within mathematics. Major subareas include model theory, proof theory, set theory, and recursion theory. Research in mathematical logic commonly addresses the mathematical properties of formal systems of logic such as their expressive or deductive power. However, it can also include uses of logic to characterize correct mathematical reasoning or to establish foundations of mathematics.
In mathematics, a theorem is a statement that has been proved, or can be proved. The proof of a theorem is a logical argument that uses the inference rules of a deductive system to establish that the theorem is a logical consequence of the axioms and previously proved theorems.
Gödel's incompleteness theorems are two theorems of mathematical logic that are concerned with the limits of provability in formal axiomatic theories. These results, published by Kurt Gödel in 1931, are important both in mathematical logic and in the philosophy of mathematics. The theorems are widely, but not universally, interpreted as showing that Hilbert's program to find a complete and consistent set of axioms for all mathematics is impossible.
Alfred Tarski was a Polish-American logician and mathematician. A prolific author best known for his work on model theory, metamathematics, and algebraic logic, he also contributed to abstract algebra, topology, geometry, measure theory, mathematical logic, set theory, and analytic philosophy.
Metalogic is the study of the metatheory of logic. Whereas logic studies how logical systems can be used to construct valid and sound arguments, metalogic studies the properties of logical systems. Logic concerns the truths that may be derived using a logical system; metalogic concerns the truths that may be derived about the languages and systems that are used to express truths.
A formal system is an abstract structure or formalization of an axiomatic system used for inferring theorems from axioms by a set of inference rules.
In mathematics, Robinson arithmetic is a finitely axiomatized fragment of first-order Peano arithmetic (PA), first set out by Raphael M. Robinson in 1950. It is usually denoted Q. Q is almost PA without the axiom schema of mathematical induction. Q is weaker than PA but it has the same language, and both theories are incomplete. Q is important and interesting because it is a finitely axiomatized fragment of PA that is recursively incompletable and essentially undecidable.
In mathematical logic, a theory is a set of sentences in a formal language. In most scenarios a deductive system is first understood from context, after which an element of a deductively closed theory is then called a theorem of the theory. In many deductive systems there is usually a subset that is called "the set of axioms" of the theory , in which case the deductive system is also called an "axiomatic system". By definition, every axiom is automatically a theorem. A first-order theory is a set of first-order sentences (theorems) recursively obtained by the inference rules of the system applied to the set of axioms.
In mathematics and abstract algebra, a relation algebra is a residuated Boolean algebra expanded with an involution called converse, a unary operation. The motivating example of a relation algebra is the algebra 2 X 2 of all binary relations on a set X, that is, subsets of the cartesian square X2, with R•S interpreted as the usual composition of binary relations R and S, and with the converse of R as the converse relation.
Logic is the formal science of using reason and is considered a branch of both philosophy and mathematics and to a lesser extent computer science. Logic investigates and classifies the structure of statements and arguments, both through the study of formal systems of inference and the study of arguments in natural language. The scope of logic can therefore be very large, ranging from core topics such as the study of fallacies and paradoxes, to specialized analyses of reasoning such as probability, correct reasoning, and arguments involving causality. One of the aims of logic is to identify the correct and incorrect inferences. Logicians study the criteria for the evaluation of arguments.
In mathematical logic, Skolem arithmetic is the first-order theory of the natural numbers with multiplication, named in honor of Thoralf Skolem. The signature of Skolem arithmetic contains only the multiplication operation and equality, omitting the addition operation entirely.
General set theory (GST) is George Boolos's (1998) name for a fragment of the axiomatic set theory Z. GST is sufficient for all mathematics not requiring infinite sets, and is the weakest known set theory whose theorems include the Peano axioms.
A timeline of mathematical logic; see also history of logic.
In mathematical logic, true arithmetic is the set of all true first-order statements about the arithmetic of natural numbers. This is the theory associated with the standard model of the Peano axioms in the language of the first-order Peano axioms. True arithmetic is occasionally called Skolem arithmetic, though this term usually refers to the different theory of natural numbers with multiplication.
In mathematical logic, a formula is satisfiable if it is true under some assignment of values to its variables. For example, the formula is satisfiable because it is true when and , while the formula is not satisfiable over the integers. The dual concept to satisfiability is validity; a formula is valid if every assignment of values to its variables makes the formula true. For example, is valid over the integers, but is not.
In mathematical logic, a first-order language of the real numbers is the set of all well-formed sentences of first-order logic that involve universal and existential quantifiers and logical combinations of equalities and inequalities of expressions over real variables. The corresponding first-order theory is the set of sentences that are actually true of the real numbers. There are several different such theories, with different expressive power, depending on the primitive operations that are allowed to be used in the expression. A fundamental question in the study of these theories is whether they are decidable: that is, is there an algorithm that can take a sentence as input and produce as output an answer "yes" or "no" to the question of whether the sentence is true in the theory.
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