natural deduction metalanguage, practical foundations
type theory (dependent, intensional, observational type theory, homotopy type theory)
computational trinitarianism =
propositions as types +programs as proofs +relation type theory/category theory
Epistemic logic is the branch of modal logic which is concerned with epistemology, hence with notions of knowledge and sometimes also notions of belief, although these may be treated separately by doxastic logic. In its applied form it has found considerable use in computer science and Artificial Intelligence.
The key modal operators for epistemic logic are forms of necessity and possibility corresponding to “It is known to be the case that” and “It may be the case that (so far as is known)”. As a form of modal logic, the semantics typically used is possible worlds semantics where the worlds correspond to maximally specific ways the world could have been. Philosophers disagree as to whether to distinguish the space of metaphysically possible worlds from the space of epistemically possible worlds (Kment 21).
Epistemic modalities are captured in epistemic modal logic by interpreting “necessarily ” as saying “It is known that proposition is true”. It is common also to indicate the epistemic agent, so that corresponding to agent we have “ knows that proposition is true”.
In the closely related ‘provability logic’, the basic modal operator interprets as “it is provable that ”.
Notice that the notions of possibility and necessity have different senses in ordinary language. For example, if we say ‘ is possible’, we may mean that is: epistemically possible, not ruled out by anything I know; physically possible, not ruled out by the laws of physics; logically possible, not ruled out by the laws of logic. Some suggest that there is a further type of possibility, metaphysical possibility intermediate between logical and physical possibility. Metaphysical possibility would allow that different laws of physics might apply.
These are variants of the formulae of the basic modal language. The basic modal operators are, here, labelled since they relate to ‘knowledge’ and indicate the epistemic agent, the knower, . These correspond to the operators in the standard form, and are used in preference to the dual forms since they are more immediately relevant to applications.
More formally, we have or , is a set of countably (finite or infinite) many atomic formulae. there is also a set , often called the set of ‘agents’ and taken to be . The set of epistemic formulae (= basic -agent epistemic language) will be denoted is given by the rules
We read as ‘’agent knows that ’’.
The converse or dual operators, denoted (so that ) reads as ‘’agent considers is possible’’.
The ‘agent’ terminology is extremely useful, but in pure modal logic texts is not used so much. It does provide an ‘intuition’ and an interpretation however.
The question then arises as to which axioms of modal logic are appropriate to the epistemic case. Answers will depend on what interpretation is given to `know' in specifying how the operator $K$ behaves. E.g., there is a difference between the knowledge of a realistic, cognitively-limited agent and that of some idealized agent with boundless resources.
It is generally admitted that axiom (T) should hold, here
which states that if is known then is true. Truth is generally taken to be a precondition of knowledge.
A much more contentious issue in the field is whether to admit an epistemic version of axiom (4). This corresponds to
which states that when is known to be true then it is also known that it is known.
It is even possible to challenge the admission of two of the most fundamental modal axioms, axioms (N) and (K). These correspond to
and
An understanding of N that it states that all theorems are known is evidently problematic. Similarly for K, it is not clear that we know the deductive consequences of the collection of propositions that we know, such as the application of modus ponens to every instance of known and .
On the other hand, we might consider epistemic logic to represent the reasoning of an ideal, logically omniscient, agent, and so admit N and K.
The geometric or combinatorial semantics of epistemic models follows the same techniques of Kripke frames as at geometric models for modal logics, whilst the algebraic models are BAOs that is Boolean algebras with operators. As usual the Kripke frames semantics is an example of coalgebraic semantics?.
A fairly recent book on epistemic logics and their applications (which was used for some of the material above):
General books on modal logic with discussion of epistemic logic:
Patrick Blackburn, M. de Rijke and Yde Venema, Modal Logic, Cambridge Tracts in Theoretical Computer Science, vol. 53, 2001.
Marcus Kracht, Tools and Techniques in Modal Logic, Studies in Logic and the Foundation of Mathematics, 142, Elsevier, 1999,
Johan van Benthem, Dynamic logic for belief revision (pdf)
Boris Kment, Varieties of Modality, SEP
See also:
Last revised on March 17, 2023 at 17:00:36. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.