The logic system of concept graphs with negation. And its relationship to predicate logic. (Q1418355)

This book presents research within the tradition of Peirce's system of existential graphs, Sowa's theory of conceptual graphs and Wille's contextual logic. The theory of conceptual graphs lacks preciseness. There are several gaps and mistakes in syntax and semantics, and in the calculus of conceptual graphs, informal definitions are used. Negation is implemented as a meta-level operator and it yields difficulties in the semantics of conceptual graphs. The author's research is focused on a mathematization of conceptual graphs with negations in order to overcome the drawbacks mentioned above. The treatise is aiming at a precise mathematical elaboration of a fragment of conceptual graphs. All necessary definitions are provided. The equivalence of the system to first-order logic is formulated and proved. The resulting graphs are called {concept graphs with cuts}, where concept graphs provide a mathematization of conceptual graphs. The book is divided into four parts: Start, Alpha, Beta and Appendix. In the first part, a motivation and an overview are presented. The crucial parts are Alpha and Beta. In the part Alpha nonexistential concept graphs with cuts are considered (they correspond to first-order formulas without variables). In Beta generic markers are introduced and the expressive power of first-order logic is reached. The contextual semantics introduced by Wille is used. The semantics is based on the power context families (families of formal contexts). The calculus for nonexistential concept graphs is constructed in the part Alpha. It is shown that the calculus is sound and complete with respect to the contextual semantics. The part Beta starts with a chapter on first-order logic. Then the contextual semantics for concept graphs is presented and the syntactic translation from concept graphs to first-order logic (a mapping \(\Phi\)) and in the opposite direction (a mapping \(\Psi\)) are described. The translation \(\Phi\) yields the classical semantics of first-order logic for concept graphs in an indirect way. It is shown that both semantics are equivalent. The full semantical and syntactical equivalence of concept graphs and first-order logic is proved. The design decisions accepted in the process of mathematization of conceptual graphs are explained and supported by some arguments in the Appendix.