Characteristic inference rules (Q2342800)

The author generalizes his notion of the quasi-characteristic rule for Heyting algebras (HA) introduced in [\textit{A. I. Tsitkin}, Mat. Sb., Nov. Ser. 102(144), 314--323 (1977; Zbl 0355.02016); translation in Math. USSR, Sb. 31, 279--288 (1977; Zbl 0386.03011)]. It is a counterpart of the Jankov-style characteristic formula: each subdirectly irreducible HA \(A\) is assigned a certain rule \(\rho(A) \) such that \(\rho(A)\) is refutable in a HA \(B\) iff \(A\) is embeddable in \(B\). Since already quasivarieties are not determined by their subdirectly irreducible algebras, dealing with the quasivariety or more general semantics requires using a wider subclass of rule-determining algebras. In this paper, the author uses partial algebras to construct such rules (generally, multi-conclusion ones), now called characteristic. It is shown that every universal class of algebras is axiomatized by a suitable set of characteristic rules, and a criterion is given for a subset of rules to be complete in the sense that any universal class is axiomatizable by the rules belonging to this subset. There are a few results on a variant of the finite embedding property (FEP) what the author calls uniform FEP. Connections between the characteristic rules and the canonical rules recently introduced by \textit{E. Jeřábek} [J. Symb. Log. 74, No. 4, 1171--1205 (2009; Zbl 1186.03045)] are also discussed.