Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2005. / Supervisor: Vladimir Lifschitz. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Carnegie Mellon University, 2005. / "May 2005." Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1984. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 224-228).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1985 J63 / Master of Science

Thesis. 1977. M.S.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ENGINEERING. / Bibliography: leaves 157-158. / M.S.

Abstract not available

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In this thesis we develop efficient methods for automated proof search within an important class of mathematical logics. The logics considered are the varying, cumulative and constant domain versions of the first-order modal logics K, K4, D, D4, T, S4 and S5, and first-order intuitionistic logic. The use of these non-classical logics is commonplace within Computing Science and Artificial Intelligence in applications in which efficient machine assisted proof search is essential. Traditional techniques for the design of efficient proof methods for classical logic prove to be of limited use in this context due to their dependence on properties of classical logic not shared by most of the logics under consideration. One major contribution of this thesis is to reformulate and abstract some of these classical techniques to facilitate their application to a wider class of mathematical logics. We begin with Bibel's Connection Calculus: a matrix proof method for classical logic comparable in efficiency with most machine orientated proof methods for that logic. We reformulate this method to support its decomposition into a collection of individual techniques for improving the efficiency of proof search within a standard cut-free sequent calculus for classical logic. Each technique is presented as a means of alleviating a particular form of redundancy manifest within sequent-based proof search. One important result that arises from this anaylsis is an appreciation of the role of unification as a tool for removing certain proof-theoretic complexities of specific sequent rules; in the case of classical logic: the interaction of the quantifier rules. All of the non-classical logics under consideration admit complete sequent calculi. We anaylse the search spaces induced by these sequent proof systems and apply the techniques identified previously to remove specific redundancies found therein. Significantly, our proof-theoretic analysis of the role of unification renders it useful even within the propositional fragments of modal and intuitionistic logic.

Modal logics have found applications in many diferent contexts. For example, epistemic modal logics can be used to reason about security protocols, temporal modal logics can be used to reason about the correctness of distributed systems and propositional dynamic logic can reason about the correctness of programs. However, pure modal logic is expressively weak and cannot represent many interesting secondorder properties that are expressible, for example, in the μ-calculus. Here we investigate the extension of modal logics with propositional quantification modulo bisimulation (bisimulation quantification). We extend existing work on bisimulation quantified modal logic by considering the variety of logics that result by restricting the structures over which they are interpreted. We show this can be a natural extension of modal logic preserving the intuitions of both modal logic and propositional quantification. However, we also find cases where such intuitions are not preserved. We examine cases where the axioms of pure modal logic and propositional quantification are preserved and where bisimulation quantifiers preserve the decidability of modal logic. We translate a number of recent decidability results for monadic second-order logics into the context of bisimulation quantified modal logics, and show how these results can be used to generate a number of interesting bisimulation quantified modal logics.