First-order classical modal logic (Q863182)

This paper focuses on the study of neighbourhood semantics for first-order modal logic. The authors argue that relational semantics have some inadequacies for the study of systems in first-order modal logic which can be removed with the adoption of the so-called general ``first-order neighbourhood frames''. These inadequacies can be summarized as follows: (i) the difficulties to study non-normal systems, (ii) the imposition of validity of both the Barcan formula and its converse which fail to be intuitively valid in many contexts, and (iii) the incompleteness of several systems without the Barcan formula. On the contrary, by means of neighbourhood semantics all these difficulties disappear. The results obtained in this paper show the advantages of this semantics. Remarkable are the strong completeness proof in terms of first-order models with constant domains for FOL+K and the general completeness proof covering the entire family of first-order classical modal logics.