Decidability (logic)

In logic, the term decidable refers to the decision problem, the question of the existence of an effective method for determining
membership in a set of formulas, or, more precisely, an algorithm that can and will return a boolean true or false value that is correct
(instead of looping indefinitely, crashing, returning "don't know" or returning a wrong answer). Logical systems such as propositional
logic are decidable if membership in their set oflogically valid formulas (or theorems) can be effectively determined. A theory (set of
sentences closed under logical consequence) in a fixed logical system is decidable if there is an effective method for determining
whether arbitrary formulas are included in the theory. Many important problems are undecidable, that is, it has been proven that no
effective method for determining membership (returning a correct answer after finite, though possibly very long, time in all cases)
can exist for them.

Contents
Relationship to computability
Decidability of a logical system
Decidability of a theory
Some decidable theories
In context of games
Some undecidable theories
Semidecidability
Relationship with completeness
See also
References
Notes
Bibliography

Relationship to computability
As with the concept of a decidable set, the definition of a decidable theory or logical system can be given either in terms of effective
methods or in terms of computable functions. These are generally considered equivalent per Church's thesis. Indeed, the proof that a
logical system or theory is undecidable will use the formal definition of computability to show that an appropriate set is not a
decidable set, and then invoke Church's thesis to show that the theory or logical system is not decidable by any effective method
(Enderton 2001, pp. 206ff.).

Decidability of a logical system

Each logical system comes with both a syntactic component, which among other things determines the notion of provability, and a
semantic component, which determines the notion of logical validity. The logically valid formulas of a system are sometimes called
the theorems of the system, especially in the context of first-order logic where Gödel's completeness theorem establishes the
equivalence of semantic and syntactic consequence. In other settings, such as linear logic, the syntactic consequence (provability)
relation may be used to define the theorems of a system.

A logical system is decidable if there is an effective method for determining whether arbitrary formulas are theorems of the logical
system. For example, propositional logic is decidable, because the truth-table method can be used to determine whether an arbitrary
propositional formula is logically valid.
First-order logic is not decidable in general; in particular, the set of logical validities in any signature that includes equality and at
least one other predicate with two or more arguments is not decidable.[1] Logical systems extending first-order logic, such as second-
order logic and type theory, are also undecidable.

The validities of monadic predicate calculus with identity are decidable, however. This system is first-order logic restricted to
signatures that have no function symbols and whose relation symbols other than equality never take more than onegument.
ar

Some logical systems are not adequately represented by the set of theorems alone. (For example, Kleene's logic has no theorems at
all.) In such cases, alternative definitions of decidability of a logical system are often used, which ask for an effective method for
determining something more general than just validity of formulas; for instance, validity of sequents, or the consequence relation {(Г,
A) | Г ⊧ A} of the logic.

Decidability of a theory
A theory is a set of formulas, which here is assumed to be closed under logical consequence. The question of decidability for a theory
is whether there is an effective procedure that, given an arbitrary formula in the signature of the theory, decides whether the formula
is a member of the theory or not. This problem arises naturally when a theory is defined as the set of logical consequences of a fixed
set of axioms. Examples of decidable first-order theories include the theory of real closed fields, and Presburger arithmetic, while the
theory of groups and Robinson arithmetic are examples of undecidable theories.

There are several basic results about decidability of theories. Every inconsistent theory is decidable, as every formula in the signature
of the theory will be a logical consequence of, and thus a member of, the theory. Every complete recursively enumerable first-order
theory is decidable. An extension of a decidable theory may not be decidable. For example, there are undecidable theories in
propositional logic, although the set of validities (the smallest theory) is decidable.

A consistent theory that has the property that every consistent extension is undecidable is said to be essentially undecidable. In fact,
every consistent extension will be essentially undecidable. The theory of fields is undecidable but not essentially undecidable.
Robinson arithmetic is known to be essentially undecidable, and thus every consistent theory that includes or interprets Robinson
arithmetic is also (essentially) undecidable.

Some decidable theories

[2]
Some decidable theories include (Monk 1976, p. 234):

The set of first-order logical validities in the signature with only equality, established by Leopold Löwenheim in 1915.
The set of first-order logical validities in a signature with equality and one unary function, established by Ehrenfeucht
in 1959.
The first-order theory of the natural numbers in the signature with equality and addition, also called Presburger
arithmetic. The completeness was established byMojżesz Presburger in 1929.
The first-order theory of the natural numbers in the signature with equality and multiplication, also called Skolem
arithmetic.
The first-order theory of Boolean algebras, established byAlfred Tarski in 1940 (found in 1940 but published in
1949).
The first-order theory of algebraically closed fields of a given characteristic, established byarski
T in 1949.
The first-order theory of real-closed ordered fields, established by Tarski in 1949 (see also Tarski's exponential
function problem).
The first-order theory of Euclidean geometry , established by Tarski in 1949.
The first-order theory of Abelian groups, established by Szmielew in 1955.
The first-order theory of hyperbolic geometry , established by Schwabhäuser in 1959.
Specific decidable sublanguages of set theoryinvestigated in the 1980s through today .(Cantone et al., 2001)
Methods used to establish decidability includequantifier elimination, model completeness, and Vaught's test.

In context of games
Some games have been classified as to their decidability:

Chess is decidable.[3][4]
[5][6]
Infinite chess (with limitations on rules and gamepieces) is decidable.
[7]
Some team games with imperfect information are undecidable.

Some undecidable theories

[2]
Some undecidable theories include (Monk 1976, p. 279):

The set of logical validities in any first-order signature with equality and either: a relation symbol of arity no less than
2, or two unary function symbols, or one function symbol of arity no less than 2, established by Trakhtenbrot in 1953.
The first-order theory of the natural numbers with addition, multiplication, and equality , established by Tarski and
Andrzej Mostowski in 1949.
The first-order theory of the rational numbers with addition, multiplication, and equality , established by Julia
Robinson in 1949.
The first-order theory of groups, established byAlfred Tarski in 1953.[8] Remarkably, not only the general theory of
groups is undecidable, but also several more specific theories, for example (as established by Mal'cev 1961) the
theory of finite groups. Mal'cev also established that the theory of semigroups and the theory of rings are
undecidable. Robinson established in 1949 that the theory of fields is undecidable.
Robinson arithmetic (and therefore any consistent extension, such asPeano arithmetic) is essentially undecidable,
as established by Raphael Robinson in 1950.
[9]
The first-order theory with equality and two function symbols
The interpretability method is often used to establish undecidability of theories. If an essentially undecidable theory T is interpretable
in a consistent theory S, then S is also essentially undecidable. This is closely related to the concept of a many-one reduction in
computability theory.

Semidecidability
A property of a theory or logical system weaker than decidability is semidecidability. A theory is semidecidable if there is an
effective method which, given an arbitrary formula, will always tell correctly when the formula is in the theory, but may give either a
negative answer or no answer at all when the formula is not in the theory. A logical system is semidecidable if there is an effective
method for generating theorems (and only theorems) such that every theorem will eventually be generated. This is different from
decidability because in a semidecidable system there may be no ef
fective procedure for checking that a formula isnot a theorem.

Every decidable theory or logical system is semidecidable, but in general the converse is not true; a theory is decidable if and only if
both it and its complement are semi-decidable. For example, the set of logical validities V of first-order logic is semi-decidable, but
not decidable. In this case, it is because there is no effective method for determining for an arbitrary formula A whether A is not in V.
Similarly, the set of logical consequences of any recursively enumerable set of first-order axioms is semidecidable. Many of the
examples of undecidable first-order theories given above are of this form.

Relationship with completeness

Decidability should not be confused with completeness. For example, the theory of algebraically closed fields is decidable but
incomplete, whereas the set of all true first-order statements about nonnegative integers in the language with + and × is complete but
undecidable. Unfortunately, as a terminological ambiguity, the term "undecidable statement" is sometimes used as a synonym for
independent statement.

See also
László Kalmár (1936)
Alonzo Church (1956)
W.V.O. Quine (1953)
 Meyer and Lambert (1967)

References

Notes
1. Trakhtenbrot, 1953
2. Donald Monk (1976). Mathematical Logic. Springer-Verlag. ISBN 9780387901701.
3. http://cs.stackexchange.com/Computer Science. "Is chess game movement TM decidable?"
(http://cs.stackexchang
e.com/questions/47722/q-is-chess-game-movement-tm-decidable)Is chess game movement TM decidable?
4. https://www.redhotpawn.com/Undecidable chess problem? (https://www.redhotpawn.com/forum/posers-and-puzzles/
undecidable-chess-problem.90513)Undecidable chess problem?
5. Mathoverflow.net/Decidability-of-chess-on-an-infinite-board (http://mathoverflow.net/questions/27967/decidability-of-c
hess-on-an-infinite-board/63684)Decidability-of-chess-on-an-infinite-board.
6. Dan Brumleve, Joel David Hamkins, Philipp Schlicht, The Mate-in-n Problem of Infinite Chess Is Decidable, Lecture
Notes in Computer Science, Volume 7318, 2012, pp. 78-88, Springer[1] (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%
2F978-3-642-30870-3_9), available at arXiv (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1201.5597v4).
7. http://www-math.mit.edu/Undecidable Problems: A Sampler , Bjorn Poonen (http://www-math.mit.edu/~poonen/paper
s/sampler.pdf) Undecidable Problems: A Sampler, Bjorn Poonen (Section 14.1, "Abstract games").
8. Tarski, A.; Mostovski, A.; Robinson, R. (1953), Undecidable Theories, Studies in Logic and the Foundation of
Mathematics, North-Holland, Amsterdam
9. Gurevich, Yuri (1976). "The Decision Problem for Standard Classes"(http://dblp.uni-trier.de/rec/bib/journals/jsyml/Gu
revich76). J. Symb. Log. 41 (2): 460–464. Retrieved 5 August 2014.

Bibliography
Barwise, Jon (1982), "Introduction to first-order logic",in Barwise, Jon, Handbook of Mathematical Logic, Studies in
Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics, Amsterdam: North-Holland, ISBN 978-0-444-86388-1
Cantone, D., E. G. Omodeo and A. Policriti, "Set Theory for Computing. From Decision Procedures to Logic
Programming with Sets," Monographs in Computer Science, Springer , 2001.
Chagrov, Alexander; Zakharyaschev, Michael (1997), Modal logic, Oxford Logic Guides,35, The Clarendon Press
Oxford University Press,ISBN 978-0-19-853779-3, MR 1464942
Davis, Martin (1958), Computability and Unsolvability, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc, New York
Enderton, Herbert (2001),A mathematical introduction to logic(2nd ed.), Boston, MA:Academic Press, ISBN 978-0-
12-238452-3
Keisler, H. J. (1982), "Fundamentals of model theory",in Barwise, Jon, Handbook of Mathematical Logic, Studies in
Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics, Amsterdam: North-Holland, ISBN 978-0-444-86388-1
Monk, J. Donald (1976),Mathematical Logic, Berlin, New York: Springer-Verlag

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Decidability_(logic)&oldid=846073910

"

This page was last edited on 16 June 2018, at 03:39(UTC).

Text is available under theCreative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License ; additional terms may apply. By using this
site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of theWikimedia
Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.