Definability and Interpolation in Philosophy
Logic in Computer Science
2026-02-10 v1
Abstract
This paper is a historical tour of occurrences of the Craig interpolation theorem and the Beth definability theorem in philosophy since the 1950s. We identify the notion of dependence as one major red thread behind these, and include some new technical results, in particular, on logical system translations and generalized definability
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2602.07907,
title = {Definability and Interpolation in Philosophy},
author = {Johan van Benthem},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.07907},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
Final version to appear in Balder ten Cate, Jean Christoph Jung, Patrick Koopmann, Christoph Wernhard and Frank Wolter, editors. Theory and Applications of Craig Interpolation