arXiv subjects

Carlo Nicolai

Publications and source records attributed to Carlo Nicolai.

8 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Supervaluation-Style Truth Revisited

Supervaluational fixed-point semantics for truth cannot be axiomatized because of its recursion-theoretic complexity. Johannes Stern (\emph{Supervaluation-Style Truth Without Supervaluations}, Journal of Philosophical Logic, 2018) proposed a new strategy (supervaluational-style truth) to capture the essential aspects of the supervaluational evaluation schema whilst limiting its recursion-theoretic complexity, hence resulting in ($\nat$-categorical) axiomatizations. Unfortunately, as we show in the paper, this strategy was not fully realized in Stern's original work: in fact, we provide counterexamples to some of Stern's key claims. However, we also vindicate Stern's project by providing different semantic incarnations of the idea and corresponding $\nat$-categorical axiomatizations. The results provide a deeper picture of the relationships between standard supervaluationism and supervaluational-style truth.

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arXiv2025

On Classical Determinate Truth

The paper proposes and studies new classical, type-free theories of truth and determinateness with unprecedented features. The theories are fully compositional, strongly classical (namely, their internal and external logics are both classical), and feature a \emph{defined} determinateness predicate satisfying desirable and widely agreed principles. The theories capture a conception of truth and determinateness according to which the generalizing power associated with the classicality and full compositionality of truth is combined with the identification of a natural class of sentences -- the determinate ones -- for which clear-cut semantic rules are available. Our theories can also be seen as the \emph{classical closures} of Kripke-Feferman truth: their $ω$-models, which we precisely pinned down, result from including in the extension of the truth predicate the sentences that are satisfied by a Kripkean closed-off fixed point model. The theories compare to recent theories proposed by Fujimoto and Halbach, featuring a primitive determinateness predicate. In the paper we show that our theories entail all principles of Fujimoto and Halbach's theories, and are proof-theoretically equivalent to Fujimoto and Halbach's $\cdplus$. {We also show establish some negative results on Fujimoto and Halbach's theories: such results show that, unlike what happens in our theories, the primitive determinateness predicate prevents one from establishing clear and unrestricted semantic rules for the language with type-free truth.

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arXiv2023

Implicit Commitment in a General Setting

Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems suggest that no single formal system can capture the entirety of one's mathematical beliefs, while pointing at a hierarchy of systems of increasing logical strength that make progressively more explicit those \emph{implicit} assumptions. This notion of \emph{implicit commitment} motivates directly or indirectly several research programmes in logic and the foundations of mathematics; yet there hasn't been a direct logical analysis of the notion of implicit commitment itself. In a recent paper, Łelyk and Nicolai carried out an initial assessment of this project by studying necessary conditions for implicit commitments; from seemingly weak assumptions on implicit commitments of an arithmetical system $S$, it can be derived that a uniform reflection principle for $S$ -- stating that all numerical instances of theorems of $S$ are true -- must be contained in $S$'s implicit commitments. This study gave rise to unexplored research avenues and open questions. This paper addresses the main ones. We generalize this basic framework for implicit commitments along two dimensions: in terms of iterations of the basic implicit commitment operator, and via a study of implicit commitments of theories in arbitrary first-order languages, not only couched in an arithmetical language.

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arXiv2022

Non-contractive logics, Paradoxes, and Multiplicative Quantifiers

The paper investigates from a proof-theoretic perspective various non-contractive logical systems circumventing logical and semantic paradoxes. Until recently, such systems only displayed additive quantifiers (Grišin, Cantini). Systems with multiplicative quantifers have also been proposed in the 2010s (Zardini), but they turned out to be inconsistent with the naive rules for truth or comprehension. We start by presenting a first-order system for disquotational truth with additive quantifiers and we compare it with Grišin set theory. We then analyze the reasons behind the inconsistency phenomenon affecting multiplicative quantifers: after interpreting the exponentials in affine logic as vacuous quantifiers, we show how such a logic can be simulated within a truth-free fragment of a system with multiplicative quantifiers. Finally, we prove that the logic of these multiplicative quantifiers (but without disquotational truth) is consistent, by showing that an infinitary version of the cut rule can be eliminated. This paves the way to a syntactic approach to the proof theory of infinitary logic with infinite sequents.

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arXiv2020

Nonclassical truth with classical strength. A proof-theoretic analysis of compositional truth over HYPE

Questions concerning the proof-theoretic strength of classical versus non-classical theories of truth have received some attention recently. A particularly convenient case study concerns classical and nonclassical axiomatizations of fixed-point semantics. It is known that nonclassical axiomatizations in four- or three-valued logics are substantially weaker than their classical counterparts. In this paper we consider the addition of a suitable conditional to First-Degree Entailment -- a logic recently studied by Hannes Leitgeb under the label `HYPE'. We show in particular that, by formulating the theory PKF over HYPE one obtains a theory that is sound with respect to fixed-point models, while being proof-theoretically on a par with its classical counterpart KF. Moreover, we establish that also its schematic extension -- in the sense of Feferman -- is as strong as the schematic extension of KF, thus matching the strength of predicative analysis.

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arXiv2020

Cut elimination for systems of transparent truth with restricted initial sequents

The paper studies a cluster of systems for fully disquotational truth based on the restriction of initial sequents. Unlike well-known alternative approaches, such systems display both a simple and intuitive model theory and remarkable proof-theoretic properties. We start by showing that, due to a strong form of invertibility of the truth rules, cut is eliminable in the systems via a standard strategy supplemented by a suitable measure of the number of applications of truth rules to formulas in derivations. Next, we notice that cut remains eliminable when suitable arithmetical axioms are added to the system. Finally, we establish a direct link between cut-free derivability in infinitary formulations of the systems considered and fixed-point semantics. Noticeably, unlike what happens with other background logics, such links are established without imposing any restriction to the premisses of the truth rules.

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arXiv2020

The Modal Logics of Kripke-Feferman Truth

We determine the modal logic of fixed-point models of truth and their axiomatizations by Solomon Feferman via Solovay-style completeness results. Given a fixed-point model $\mathcal{M}$, or an axiomatization $S$ thereof, we find a modal logic $M$ such that a modal sentence $φ$ is a theorem of $M$ if and only if the sentence $φ^*$ obtained by translating the modal operator with the truth predicate is true in $\mathcal{M}$ or a theorem of $S$ under all such translations. To this end, we introduce a novel version of possible worlds semantics featuring both classical and nonclassical worlds and establish the completeness of a family of non-congruent modal logics whose internal logic is subclassical with respect to this semantics.

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arXiv2017

Iterated reflection principles over full disquotational truth

Iterated reflection principles have been employed extensively to unfold epistemic commitments that are incurred by accepting a mathematical theory. Recently this has been applied to theories of truth. The idea is to start with a collection of Tarski-biconditionals and arrive by finitely iterated reflection at strong compositional truth theories. In the context of classical logic it is incoherent to adopt an initial truth theory in which A and 'A is true' are inter-derivable. In this article we show how in the context of a weaker logic, which we call Basic De Morgan Logic, we can coherently start with such a fully disquotational truth theory and arrive at a strong compositional truth theory by applying a natural uniform reflection principle a finite number of times.

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