On modal logics which enrich first-order S5 (Q801894)

The author takes as basic the ordinary first order modal predicate logic based on S5. He considers extending the language in four principal ways: adding quantification over possibilia as well as over actual existents, adding quantification over one-place predicates, adding an 'actuality' operator which in a doubly indexed semantics takes you back to the world you started from, and a generalized version of this operator which enables you to backtrack as many places as you need. Various different semantics are offered for each extension and the bulk of the paper is concerned to obtain results about the relative expressive powers of these extensions one with another. A chart of all the inclusions between the various systems is proved on p. 438. Certain other inclusions depend on restricting the class of predicates. Finally some comments are provided about the ontological commitment of modal logic.