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Explanation of a result by Scroggs (modal logic)

 
 
jmc12
 
Reply Mon 19 Jul, 2010 05:51 pm
I've been thinking about the modal logic S5 and a famous result proved by Scroggs (paper easily found on google) that every normal extension of S5 is a finitely many valued logic (S5 itself isn't finitely valued). Thus, every such extension will have amongst its theorems a formula which (intuitively speaking) imposes a finite bound on the number of distinct (i.e. not necessarily equivalent) propositions. A simple example of such a formula is

NEC(p1 <--> p2) v NEC(p1 <---> p3) v NEC(p2 <---> p3)

Intuitively, for any three propositions at least two of them will be necessarily equivalent----there are at most 2 propositions. Of course, not every extension of S5 will impose this bound, but it imposes a bound for some n.

Scroggs' argument is quite complicated and although I can pretty much follow it, I've no idea what's going on intuitively here. That is, I can't really see what it is about S5 (and the assumptions about modality that it encodes) which makes it the strongest logic which does not impose a bound on the number of propositions.

Of course, one philosophically interesting fact about S5 is that (according to it), the modal facts are themselves non-contingent, i.e. for any modally closed formula P, (P <--> NEC(P)) is a theorem of S5.

Is this fact about S5 connected with Scroggs' result?

Could one give an informal argument for Scroggs' result that helps us see what's going on here modally?

Thanks in advance for any help.
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