A modal reduction for partial logic (Q2366529)

Partial logic may be seen as a three-valued logic whose third truth value can be soundly interpreted as ``undefined'' or ``neither true nor false''. It is well known that three-valued partial logic -- or partial information -- can be modelled within classical modal logic. However, for many purposes it seems more convenient to allow not only partiality, but also incoherence in logic, dealing with a four-valued logic whose non- classical truth values should be interpreted as ``undefined'' and ``both true and false'', respectively. The interest of this interpretation was pointed out by J. M. Dunn. This paper aims to prove that this four-valued partial and incoherent logic can also be reduced to classical modal logic, more precisely, to the modal system S4, and that when attention is restricted to the three-valued case, the reducing modal logic becomes just S4 plus McKinsey's axiom, i.e., the system often known as S4.1.