English

An Escape from Vardanyan's Theorem

Logic 2023-12-20 v3

Abstract

Vardanyan's Theorems state that QPL(PA)\mathsf{QPL}(\mathsf{PA}) - the quantified provability logic of Peano Arithmetic - is Π20\Pi^0_2 complete, and in particular that this already holds when the language is restricted to a single unary predicate. Moreover, Visser and de Jonge generalized this result to conclude that it is impossible to computably axiomatize the quantified provability logic of a wide class of theories. However, the proof of this fact cannot be performed in a strictly positive signature. The system QRC1\mathsf{QRC}_1 was previously introduced by the authors as a candidate first-order provability logic. Here we generalize the previously available Kripke soundness and completeness proofs, obtaining constant domain completeness. Then we show that QRC1\mathsf{QRC}_1 is indeed complete with respect to arithmetical semantics. This is achieved via a Solovay-type construction applied to constant domain Kripke models. As corollaries, we see that QRC1\mathsf{QRC}_1 is the strictly positive fragment of QGL\mathsf{QGL} and a fragment of QPL(PA)\mathsf{QPL}(\mathsf{PA}).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2102.13091,
  title  = {An Escape from Vardanyan's Theorem},
  author = {Ana de Almeida Borges and Joost J. Joosten},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2102.13091},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

Second installment of work presented in arXiv:2003.13651

R2 v1 2026-06-23T23:31:18.070Z