Necessity and relative contingency (Q995671)

The author characterizes a formal language having in its logical syntax (in addition to the classical propositional operators) one contingent propositional constant and a non-classical propositional operator formally representing the notion of a proposition being absolutely true. Pizzi constructs a set-theoretic possible worlds relational semantics for the language. By replacing in this language the non-classical operator by the necessity operator, an additional formal language is introduced. A formal system is characterized for each one of those languages (systems KDeltaTau and KBoxTau). Semantic tableau rules are formulated for the language with the necessity operator and shown to be related to the models of the set-theoretic possible worlds semantics. This is shown to yield a decision procedure for the notion of validity of the relational semantics and is instrumental in a completeness proof of KBoxTau with respect to the aforementioned notion of validity. Both KDeltaTau and KBoxTau are extended (by adding a definition of non-contingency to the latter system, and a definition of necessity to the former system). Both of these extensions are shown to be equivalent. Completeness of KDeltaTau with respect to the possible worlds semantics clearly follows, as well as its decidability. Finally, deontic system KD is shown to be a fragment of the extension of KDeltaTau; and modal system K is proved to be a fragment of a system weaker than KDeltaTau.