Denial Logic

TL;DR

Denial Logic DL models agents with justified false beliefs, providing a formal framework for philosophical skepticism and related scenarios, including brains in vats, by extending justification logic with negative constant specifications.

Contribution

It introduces negative constant specifications in Denial Logic, enabling modeling of agents with justified false beliefs, and extends DL with the Logic of Proofs for more complex agent modeling.

Findings

DL is sound and complete using Artemov's semantics.

Negative constant specifications model justified false beliefs.

A 'Blue Pill' theorem constructs models where agents falsely believe they are not brains in vats.

Abstract

Denial Logic DL, a system of justification logic, is the logic of an agent whose justified beliefs are false, who cannot avow his own propositional attitudes or believe tautologies, but who can believe contradictions. Using Artemov's natural semantics for justification logic JL, in which justifications are interpreted as sets of formulas, we provide an inductive construction of models of DL, and show that DL is sound and complete. Some notions developed for JL, such as constant specifications and the internalization property, are inconsistent with DL. In contrast, we define negative constant specifications, which can be used in DL to model agents with justified false beliefs. Denial logic can therefore be relevant to philosophical skepticism. We define coherent negative constant specifications for DL to model a Putnamian brain in a vat with the justified false belief that it is not a brain in a vat, and prove a "Blue Pill" theorem, which produces a model of JL in which "I am a brain in a vat" is false. We extend DL to the algebraic fibring of Denial Logic with the Logic of Proofs to model envatted brains who can justify and check tautologies and who can avow their propositional attitudes. Denial Logic was inspired by online debates over anthropogenic global warming.