Course syllabus
The course gives a mainly semantically oriented introduction to modern modal propositional logic and relational (Kripke) semantics. It offers both a mathematical foundation and an introduction to some of the many applications within, e.g., philosophy, metamathematics or computer science.
Literature
- As main textbook, we will use (selected parts of) Modal Logic for Open Minds by Johan van Benthem, ISBN: 9781575865980 (more information about the book here).
- There are several entries in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy that are worth a read, e.g., Modal logic, Modern origins of modal logic, Arthur Prior, Epistemic Logic, Intensional logic, Intuitionistic logic, Temporal logic.
- You are encouraged to play around with the Modal Logic Playground.
- Some more supporting reading material may be added during the course.
Schedule
Please see the TimeEdit schedule (some minor changes may still be made).
The course starts November 6th; there is a break in the teaching between Dec 22nd – Jan 8th, and the exam is planned for Jan 21st.
Example contents
- Kripke semantics
- proof systems
- completeness theorems via canonical models, and refined constructions
- decidability
- incompleteness
- bisimulation and invariance
- correspondence
Detailed plan
Please see the Modules page for information about lectures and exercise sessions, including reading assignments and suggested exercises.
Learning outcomes
On successful completion of the course the student will be able to:
Knowledge and understanding
- account for Kripke semantics for modal logic, including correspondence between modal formulas and properties of binary relations,
- account for basic model theory of modal logic, e.g., connections between bisimulation and modal equivalence,
- account for some central applications of modal logic, e.g., epistemic logic, provability logic, or dynamic logic,
Competence and skills
- formulate, and present proofs of, the most important results in the course, including completeness, decidability and correspondence results, as well as of lemmas that are used in the proofs,
- formalise argumentation that is dependent on non truth-functional sentence
operators,
Judgement and approach
- show awareness of the relationships between systems of modal logic and other types
of logics, - contrast an intensional and an extensional approach to modal logic.
Course summary:
| Date | Details | Due |
|---|---|---|