English

First-Order Modal Logic in HOL: Deep and Shallow Embeddings with Automated Faithfulness (Extended Preprint)

Artificial Intelligence 2026-07-12 v1 Logic

Abstract

We extend, in Isabelle/HOL, the deep-and-shallow embedding methodology of our prior work from propositional to first-order modal logic (FML) with constant-domain Kripke semantics. Three embeddings of FML into classical higher-order logic (HOL) are provided side by side: a deep embedding, a heavyweight maximal-shallow embedding, and a lightweight minimal-shallow embedding. The minimal-shallow embedding is presented as an Isabelle/HOL locale, parametrised by an accessibility relation, a world-indexed interpretation, a universe of worlds, and a variable assignment; the locale form admits a global faithfulness theorem, stating that quantifying over all minimal-shallow interpretations recovers exactly deep validity. A central technical contribution is a mechanisation, for FML under constant-domain Kripke semantics, of the (countable) downward L\"owenheim-Skolem theorem, which underpins the automation of our faithfulness proof between the deep and minimal-shallow embeddings. Deploying it inside an extension of the minimal-shallow locale resolves the surjectivity problem that arises against an uncountable domain of individuals -- where the locale's variable assignment, having countable domain V = nat, cannot be surjective onto the domain -- and thereby yields faithfulness over the full domain. Since prior work treats only the propositional fragment, we develop here the substitution machinery (free/bound-variable predicates, the fresh-variable function, capture-avoiding substitution, alphabetic renaming, the substitutability predicate, the substitution lemma, and size-based induction principles) needed for the first-order quantifiers.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.10880,
  title  = {First-Order Modal Logic in HOL: Deep and Shallow Embeddings with Automated Faithfulness (Extended Preprint)},
  author = {Christoph Benzmüller and Daniel Kirchner},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.10880},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

21 pages. Extended version, with a source-code appendix, of a paper accepted at ARQNL 2026 (International Workshop on Automated Reasoning in Quantified Non-Classical Logics). The full Isabelle/HOL development is included as ancillary files