Abstraction in Fitch's Basic Logic

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History and Philosophy of Logic

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Abstraction in Fitch's Basic Logic

Eric Thomas Updike
a a
Residential Faculty, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Glendale Community College, Glendale, AZ, 85302, USA Version of record first published: 17 Feb 2012.
To cite this article: Eric Thomas Updike (2012): Abstraction in Fitch's Basic Logic, History and Philosophy of Logic, 33:3, 215-243 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01445340.2011.648312
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HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF LOGIC, 33 (August 2012), 215243
Abstraction in Fitchs Basic Logic

Eric Thomas Updike
Residential Faculty, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Glendale Community College, Glendale, AZ 85302, USA etupdike@yahoo.com Received 19 July 2011 Revised 19 November 2011 Accepted 20 November 2011
Downloaded by [University of Chicago] at 22:08 09 January 2013
Fitchs basic logic is an untyped illative combinatory logic with unrestricted principles of abstraction effecting a type collapse between properties (or concepts) and individual elements of an abstract syntax. Fitch does not work axiomatically and the abstraction operation is not a primitive feature of the inductive clauses dening the logic. Fitchs proof that basic logic has unlimited abstraction is not clear and his proof contains a number of errors that have so far gone undetected. This paper corrects these errors and presents a reasonably intuitive proof that Fitchs system K supports an implicit abstraction operation. Some general remarks on the philosophical signicance of basic logic, especially with respect to neo-logicism, are offered, and the paper concludes that basic logic models a highly intensional form of logicism.
1. Introduction F. B. Fitch (19081987) is widely recognized for developing the proof system that bears his name and for presenting the paradox of knowability in his 1963 paper A LogicalAnalysis of Some Value Concepts. His most systematic body of work, and arguably the most important, was devoted to a close family of illative combinatory logics collectively entitled basic logic, a contribution that, unlike the paradox of knowability, has elicited spare commentary from contemporary philosophers.1 Basic logic has much of the tractability of rst-order logic while containing a non-trivial fragment of the rich expressive power of second-order logic, in a system which is simpler than set theory. A survey of the properties of basic logic reveals its peculiar double nature which combines features of rst- and second-order logics: basic logic has unlimited abstraction and comprehension, enjoys nontrivial inferential power in spite of the Curry paradox, is able to dene a range of concepts customarily associated with higher-order logics such as the ancestral of an arbitrary relation, contains a considerable quantity of mathematics, is (partially) semantically closed as it can dene a notion of reective truth specic to a kind of abstract syntax,2 is demonstrably consistent and the base system for basic logic is complete. These facts, except completeness, were essentially established by Fitch though not always in ways that would meet contemporary standards of rigor.3 The fact that these properties can be combined into a consistent logical framework which has genuine mathematical content is something of a revelation. This evaluation of the signicance of basic logic demands an explanation of the relative neglect of basic logic by historians of logic. In this regard, I can only speculate as to the relevant intellectual history. Basic logic is a highly intensional and type-free system and
1
Fitchs rst paper on basic logic was published in 1942 and the last was published in 1984, with many intermediary contributions. See Anderson et al. 1975 for a partial bibliography of Fitchs work. The extended form of the base system of basic logic has this property. Truth is reective in the sense that the truth operator (and its dual) can (truly) apply to itself. Myhill 1950 established a completeness theorem for a system fairly similar to basic logic. Future work will show how to modify Myhills completeness proof with the notion of a structured variable to establish a completeness theorem for Fitchs system K , which was the rst formulation of basic logic. The phrase abstract syntax is from Cantini 1996.
History and Philosophy of Logic ISSN 0144-5340 print/ISSN 1464-5149 online 2012 Taylor & Francis http://www.tandfonline.com http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01445340.2011.648312
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Fitch was strongly committed to some species of logical realism involving genuine ontological commitments to propositions, attributes and essences, where the latter are assigned to objects by propositions. The intellectual environment in which basic logic developed was not friendly to a system with these features, facing, on the one side, the extreme extensionalism of Quine and the anti-metaphysical polemics of the logical positivists, and, on the other, standing in direct conict with partisans of type theory. The success of set theory in philosophical problem solving and the alleged reduction of the intensional to the extensional seems to have left basic logic as something of a curiosity disconnected from broader intellectual movements in philosophical logic. Though Fitch does not appear to have had difculty nding outlets for publishing articles on basic logic his work was simply too far removed from orthodoxy to invite inclusion in rational reconstructions of the development of 20th century logic until very recently.4 A signicant barrier to appreciating Fitchs formal work today is that he worked within the tradition of combinatory logic and his work was in various ways inuenced by Whiteheads process philosophy. These movements have largely fallen silent (as grand philosophical projects) in the contemporary philosophical scene. Fitch was also adverse to model theory programmatically (and likewise to any semantic theory that relies on a denotation relation to imbue expressions with content) and philosophers accustomed to approaching philosophical logic under the tripartite division of syntax, semantics and pragmatics may nd his work incoherent.5 One reason Fitch seems to have avoided model theory was that he wanted his solutions to philosophical problems to be free from the charge that they covertly rely on homophonic truth conditions provided by a background model, the effect of which (so the worry goes) merely defers the problem of interest to the metatheory. The cost of this aversion to model theory was high as it made Fitchs work inaccessible to most logically minded philosophers who demand an explicit interface linking syntax to the intended semantics.6 Basic logic is supposed to convey something meaning theoretic purely in virtue of syntax without relying on any kind of intermediate, either senses or a relation of denotation, to guarantee the correctness of the system.7 It is hard to see how to convince someone of this claim who is not already a disciple of basic logic. Fitchs aversion to modern semantic theory was also part of a methodological program for philosophy whereby basic logic would serve as a neutral framework in which different philosophical theories could be compared and evaluated, moreover, that before discussion between philosophical disputants can even begin some such metalanguage for philosophy
4
So far as I know Cantini 2009 is the rst systematic attempt to include Fitchs work on type-free foundations for logic and mathematics within the broader history of mathematical logic. Cantini also wonders why Fitchs work on logic is forgotten today. Cantini speculates that Fitchs peers took his work as primarily relevant to a formalist foundational project and to illative combinatory logic in particular (p. 937). However, Fitch seems to have understood propositions in the sense of Russell and if the constituency relation (of an object in a proposition) nds an exact analogue in the part/whole relation of syntax then formalist philosophical scruples may instead betray a thoroughgoing commitment to logical realism rather than to a crude formalism. Here as in other areas Fitch does not give a great deal of guidance but some hints may be found in his Propositions as the Only Realities published in 1971. Krner 1976 records some such attitude from Geach and McDowell in their respective responses to a talk by Fitch on a combinatory logic similar to basic logic. Haack, in her review 1978 of the proceedings recorded in the Krner volume, calls their comments somewhat chilly. There are a few exceptions to the general lack of interest in Fitchs program. The Frege structures of Aczel 1980, the systems of Apostoli 2000, the minimal framework of Cantini 1996, and the work on type-free logics in Feferman 1984, all bear fruitful comparisons to basic logic. Scott and Myhill (especially the latter) devoted important papers to basic logic and Gilmore 1968 (and Gilmores later work on partial set theory) is somewhat in the tradition of basic logic. The algorithmic logic of Aitken and Barrett 2004, 2007a,b is closely allied with the philosophical program of basic logic. The base system for basic logic, Fitchs system K , is complete with respect to what is essentially the theory of pairing (see Myhill 1950 for a proof of this type) though Fitch did not develop basic logic in order to exemplify this kind of completeness.
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must be used (this is so even if the object of concern is basic logic itself). A realist semantics for the metalanguage in which philosophical theories are rationally surveyed is not neutral, at least if the dispute is about the background semantics itself. Unfortunately, Fitch never managed to show in detail just how basic logic would serve this particular ideological cause and the metaphilosophical role of basic logic is by no means apparent and to many philosophers not even desirable.8 These issues were not the only problems basic logic had in nding a sympathetic audience. Fitch (1942) outlined a proof that basic logic has an implicit abstraction operator in the rst paper devoted to basic logic but the methodology is obscure as it proceeds through a series of sometimes bafing abbreviatory devices.9 Moreover, the combinatorial basis for basic logic is not combinatorial complete in isolation (certain logical operators are also necessary for establishing this metalogical fact) contra the situation with pure combinatory logic. Fitchs choice of combinators is given very little motivation and his mixing of combinators with standard logical operators is highly unconventional. Fitchs philosophical program thus begins with a certain lack of clarity which was inherited by Fitchs various extensions of the original system of basic logic. This paper is intended to satisfy two formal desiderata. The rst is to present a clear canonical proof of monadic and relational abstraction in basic logic which highlights very clearly how the clauses of basic logic work together to effect what amounts to a substitution operation. The second desideratum is to correct some subtle aws in Fitchs own presentation which have, so far as I know, gone undetected for nearly 70 years. Some remarks of a claricatory and motivational nature are included, especially regarding Fitchs choice of combinators and the ambitious metaphilosophical role Fitch thought basic logic would ultimately serve. Basic logic is worth a second look in the light of recent trends in the philosophy of mathematics occasioned by the revival of Frege studies. Fitchs abstraction is different in kind from the prevailing methodology found in the HaleWright approach to abstraction and some brief comments on the signicance of this difference is offered at the end of the paper. 2. The system K Fitchs illative combinatory logic K is the base system for basic logic in the sense that it (or a theorem-wise equivalent system) is extended to various other systems as Fitch expanded his investigations to account for new mathematical and logical phenomena. K is a universal calculus in the sense that the class of theorems of any nitary system (understood as an ordered pair consisting of a recursive language L and an L-theory equipped with an effective consequence relation) can be represented within it.10 Theories with this property are characterized as Turing complete in the Chomsky hierarchy. As K is itself nitary it can represent itself, hence K surveys every possible way of specifying a class of propositions recursively without exceeding the nitary standpoint. Evidently K isolates some important class of truths specic to formal representation. In his 1944 paper A Minimum Calculus for Logic Fitch described the way in which basic logic involved some notion of truth vital to formalization in the exact sciences: Some logical truths are in some respects more important than others. The most fundamental, it would seem, are those which are required for formulating or expressing
Basic logic does have resources sufcient to establish interesting results in metalogic, in particular, a kind of 0 2 -incompleteness result, which generalizes Gdels rst incompleteness theory, will be established in forthcoming work. 9 In subsequent papers on basic logic Fitch refers to the rst paper for the proof of abstraction so he evidently thought he had established its proof beyond doubt. 10 A precise denition of representation-in-K will be given later in this section.
8
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Eric Thomas Updike all the others. A really basic logic is one in which every other system of logic can be dened, without necessarily settling the question of the validity or non-validity of such other systems of logic. The theorems of a basic logic are logically valid in the sense that they are required or presupposed in all rational discussion of other systems of logic, since such discussion cannot be effectively carried on without a logic in which the various other systems are specied and compared. (Fitch 1944a, p. 89)
Fitchs basic logic may be interpreted as an abstract syntax for the presentation of theories as formal objects and it functions as an ur-logic which captures precisely what is necessary (and sufcient) for formalization in the exact sciences.11 The theory has semantic content of a sort as Fitch seems to understand basic logic as involving the construction of languages in a universal syntax which yields abstract syntactic structures having the same structure as propositions (with respect to constituency), properties (with respect to exemplication) and concepts (with respect to the falling under relation). If propositions are combinations of constituents (the Russellian conception of propositions) and supposing properties are assigned to objects by propositions, then the idea nds support from the fact that K is combinatorially complete, which is an immediate corollary of the proof of monadic abstraction in the next section. Fitch (1942) claims that K is a formulation of a system of propositions, apparently all that can be expressed by a sentence in a recursive language, and basic logic evidently exhausts possibilities for the representation of concepts by nitary means (assuming that concepts depend on some sort of nite specication). As briey indicated in Section 1 it was Fitchs intention that basic logic would serve as a metalanguage for philosophy and the universal characteristics of basic logic just indicated give insight into how basic logic was to achieve this desideratum though the associated metaphysics will be very distasteful to those with a preference for desert landscapes.12 Basic logic is a mixed logic containing logical operators and combinators.13 The combinators are general function types which are intended to represent the combinatorial character of mathematics (Russellian propositions, as briey discussed before, are particularly amendable to representation in combinatory logics). Fitch does not use the traditional pair of
11
12
Basic logic is richer than apparently similar projects involving universal grammar or universal notational systems such as Backus-Naur notation in theoretical computer science. K contains a fragment of set theory (the extent of this is discussed later) and extensions of K contain considerably more (perhaps all that is needed for ordinary mathematics). Indeed, from the proof-theoretic point of view K is able to match the deductive power of any nitary theory, including ZFC. This is so since K can represent every nitary inductive denition, indeed, every recursively enumerable set of natural numbers (the former was essentially established in Fitch 1942, Theorem 5.16, the latter in Fitch 1944b, as Theorem III). Prospects for such a program obviously depends on the extent to which the axiomatic method is applicable in philosophy, including ethics and aesthetics, of which there is substantial doubt after the demise of logical positivism. Fitch was entirely serious about the role of logic in philosophy and in 1968 he anticipated the objection that value theory, of all things, can nd no use for symbolic logic: Naturally [symbolic logic] meets with strong opposition from those who do not have the technical training to understand it, and from those who feel that, though science has made great advances by use of mathematics, no analogous advance, by similar use of exact methods, is to be expected in philosophy. There is also the mistaken supposition that value concepts (e.g., those of ethics and [a]esthetics) cannot be handled by symbolic logic and that all use of symbolic logic indicates a return to a hopeless materialism and skepticism. Quite the reverse is actually the case. The only way that mankind can develop an ethics and a philosophy commensurate with its achievement in building the atomic bomb is to make full use of symbolic logic in criticizing and correcting the past systems of ethics and philosophy and in constructing new and better ones. (Fitch 1968, p. 545)
13
Similar sentiments are also found among advocates of the Unity of Science Movement, as detailed in Reisch 2005. The combinators were extensively investigated by Curry and were rst introduced in Schnnkel 1924. Quines preface to Schonnkels article in the van Heijenoort collection is a useful primer on the combinators. More advanced treatments may be found in Curry and Feys 1958 and Curry et al. 1972.
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combinators S and K (the latter of which is distinguished from Fitchs system with the same name) from which the proof of abstraction in pure combinatory logic is a simple affair.14 Fitch uses the compositionality combinator B, the duplication/contraction combinator W and the distinguished combinators and its relational counterpart which model membership/exemplication. These combinators do not form a combinatorially complete set in isolation the logical operators of the system are also involved in the proof that basic logic has both monadic and relational abstraction, a feature that is unique in the literature on combinatory logic. The presentation of K below will follow that of Fitch 1942. Hermes 1965 and Myhill 1984 present proof-theoretic alternatives which are in some respects simpler but they suppress the role of the combinators as they treat abstraction axiomatically. As discussed below there are philosophical disadvantages to these alternatives which arguably outweigh their gains in formal simplicity. Like combinatory logic, basic logic is a simple applicative language which means its expressions are built from a single binary operation called application from some small stock of primitive expressions or alphabet (which are expressions which are not combinations of others). Other modes of combination could, in principle, be incorporated but the binary mode is the most basic kind. Application should not be confused with concatenation since the latter involves the manipulation and combination of nite sequences. It is not assumed in advance that basic logic quanties over nite sequences.15 Calculi with application as the only mode of combination for expressions are combinatory calculi; Fitch (1942) observes that all calculi can be formulated as a combinatory calculus. Fixing a nite stock of primitive expressions and considering all possible combinatory calculi constructed from them by application also surveys every possible kind of formal calculus in any countable language (Fitch 1942, p. 106). Hence, every formal system becomes comparable since each can be formulated from the same basic stock of expressions via the same mode of combination. It is possible to choose a single primitive expression from which all calculi can, in principle, be constructed. is understood to be syntactically simple or atomic in the sense that from the point of view of basic logic it has no proper parts no matter that its tokens are necessarily complex (for example, contains microdots, among other possible physical constituents).16 The operation of application is represented as APP(x , y), for any expressions x , y, and the result of this operation is represented by the notation (xy) for convenience. In applicative languages (xy) is conventionally read as the application of y to x , and in the Curry tradition it is generally understood as expressing the proposition y is a member of x or as expressing the converse of the relation y falls under x . Expressions of the form ((xy)z) are understood as the application of z to the result of applying y to x , in which case x may be interpreted as a functor. Grouping to the left suggests that an expression of the form (x (yz)) is the application of the pair yz to x , in which case x may be interpreted as a binary relation though as seen later there are other ways to represent binary relations in basic logic.
14
15
16
In combinatory logic these combinators satisfy the equations Kxy = x and Sxyz = xz(yz). K (the constant function) allows the system to introduce novel terms and S is carefully engineered to effect a substitution operation while simultaneously eliminating duplications of terms. Fitchs extension of basic logic to his system K , which adds universal quantication to K , can quantify over all nite sequences by using Quines method of framed ingredients given in Quine 1981. It might be thought that this last point is simply too obvious to bear mention. However, basic logic is arguably a system for the description of syntax, in particular, a description of general sign-shapes. That is to be free of any further syntactical analysis in terms of simpler components must be explicitly assumed in advance.
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The universe U of all expressions (of basic logic) is inductively generated from the single atomic expression via the binary operation of application. Elements of U (called U expressions) will be denoted in the metatheory by lower-case Roman letters. Examples of U -expressions are the following: , ( ), ( ( )), (( ) ), ( ( ( ))) . . . . (1)
For notational convenience, we associate pairs of parentheses to the left, so that abc is an abbreviation for ((ab)c) while a(bc) abbreviates (a(bc)) and a(bc)d abbreviates ((a(bc))d ). By this convention, the expression ( a1 . . . an ) is an abbreviation for the formally correct (. . . (( a1 )a2 ) . . . an ). Note that expressions of the form (aa) are members of U and it will be seen later that expressions of that form are provable in basic logic. This satises Fefermans criterion in Feferman 1984 for a system to be untyped, namely, that the system must actually have non-trivial instances of self-application as provable theses in order to be genuinely type-free. On the Feferman criterion for type-freeness, the language of ZFC is not type-free though the expression x x is well-formed but all its instances are false in a well-founded universe. It need not be assumed that U is a completed, innite totality. However, the following metatheoretical facts imply an axiom of innity in the metatheory since the sign for identity is interpreted as strict literal identity: Proposition 2.1 For all a, b U , a = (ab) and in particular = (ab). From the standpoint of basic logic, it is sufcient to assume that U is potentially innite. We also have the useful fact that for all a, b, c, d U , if (ab) = (cd ) then a = c and b = d . This is the basis for dening ordered pairs, if they are wanted. The elements of U have been characterized as expressions which suggests that they are candidates for some kind of meaning. This suggestion should be resisted since it is not clear in advance that, say, has any meaning at all in isolation. It is more useful at this stage to think of the elements of U as items of an abstract syntax which will be used to represent other combinatorial calculi. It may be helpful to view the denition of K (forthcoming) as a truth-denition where truth in the sense of K does not require a relation of reference to domains as in model theory. U -expressions can play a double-role in the theory, as expressing propositions and as constituents of the same (and by type-freeness multiple instances of an expression in a context can play either role). The use/mention distinction is not articulated in terms of an explicit assignment of type (as in Gilmore 2005) but is resolved by the functional role the expression plays in the given context. This role must be discovered by repeatedly applying the dening clauses of basic logic, given below. Fitchs development of basic logic is highly unconventional. He starts by choosing U -expressions denoted by =, , , B, B1 , W , &, , E in such a way that no one is part of another (this is always possible). Indeed, as shown in Hermes 1965 by letting n be the n-fold application of to itself it is easily seen that in the sequence of expressions 2 2 , 3 3 , 4 4 , . . . no two distinct elements contain the other as a part, and conversely (p. 220). Choose then n n , for 2 n 10, as the U -expressions abbreviated by =, , , B, B1 , W , &, , E , respectively. The remaining stock of expressions can be used as free variables. Finally, in the denition of K below the expressions in square brackets such as [a = b] are more properly written as ((= a)b) but the inx notation will be used wherever it promotes clarity (even more liberal conventions will be used frequently, for example, often we write a = b without any grouping symbols).
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K is dened as the smallest class of U -expressions satisfying the following inductive clauses:17 Definition 2.2 Fitchs Basic Logic K : [a = b] K a,b are syntactically identical U -expressions [a f ] K fa K Bfga K f (ga) K afb K fab K B1 fgab K f (ga)b K Wfa K faa K [a&b] K a K and b K [a b] K a K or b K Ef K (a U )fa K Rule[=] Rule[ ] Rule[B] Rule[ ] Rule[B1 ] Rule[W ] Rule[&] Rule[] Rule[E ]
K is K plus the following additional -style rule for the universal operator A: Af K (a U )fa K Rule[A].
Fitch presented K as an extension of K with the above rule and 10 additional rules for negation (symmetric to the rules for K and the rule for A above). This is not necessary since it is possible to dene a materially adequate negation operator for K , which Fitch (1984) sketched in outline, though this is not the place for a detailed proof of this fact. A few explanatory comments are in order. A form of membership (the sign is more than incidentally related to ) may be expressed as the application of one term to another, as captured by Rule [ ] above. The rule for E is intended to express that a U -expression is nonempty or inhabited. The distinguished propositional connectives work exactly as expected. K contains combinators (like W , B, B1 ), which are general function types whose functional behavior is independent of any underlying domain in the sense that their functional behavior does not depend on the specication of a domain and a co-domain in advance. This standpoint treats functions as rules for computation rather than the Dirichlet conception of functions as single-valued binary relations between antecedently given sets. As shown in the next section the effect of this is that K provides a uniform method for abstraction over any formal theory of interest. Indeed, it may be surprising that Fitchs combinators are sufcient for establishing combinatorial completeness since in the standard presentation of the pure combinatory calculus W and B are dened in terms of the combinatorially complete set of combinators {S , K }. K is an illative combinatory logic since it mixes combinators with logical notations, though it may be remarked that K has no explicit sign for negation nor for implication. The lack of negation disables K from having means for representing universal quantication. Note that the equations for the standard combinators, such as Wfa = faa, are not theorems of K . However, one may dene a relation = which allows K to dene term models of combinatory logic in the sense of ChurchRosser. In terms of its functional behavior W contracts multiple instances of terms (it may also be characterized as duplicating the same), while B is the general form of compositionality
17
Fitch presents basic logic using a number of notations original with Peano. Ive modied Fitchs notation to promote clarity, where I thought such was needed.
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(B1 behaves similarly).18 Since the main task of this paper is to show that K has unlimited monadic and relational abstraction it seems reasonable to present K with the standard combinators S and K , as Fitch 1963 himself does for a system related to basic logic, rather than via Fitchs combinators in the denition above. However, there is a disadvantage in doing this. Fitch 1936 concisely shows the role of W in the derivation of Russells paradox, indeed, W is the means for dening the diagonal of a function. In this paper, Fitch calls a formula (x ) the contraction of a formula (x , x ) if for all x , (x , x ) is equivalent to (x ). If is the contraction of x (x ) it follows that for all x , x (x ) is equivalent to (x ). Assuming that formulae themselves are within the range of quantication it follows that () is equivalent to () (Fitch 1936, pp. 9293). If the W combinator is available in the substructural part of the logic, then for any (x , x ) one may always nd some which is its contraction, namely, choose to be W .19 Fitch (1936 ) presents a system without an analogue to the W combinator, has negation and material implication, has a notation for classes while avoiding the class antinomies, and has an unrestricted form of the principle of excluded middle. The strategy is to keep the logic classical (and the scope of quantication unrestricted) at the expense of disabling certain kinds of denitions, even denitions which are combinatorially very trivial (like in Russells paradox). Unfortunately, Fitch notes that developing mathematics in this system appears to be impossible so its role in foundationalist studies is minimal. In particular, the lack of W apparently prevents the system from dening a xed-point combinator so the recursion theorem will not be provable. In nearly every presentation of K over four decades Fitch highlights the role of W in its dening clauses rather than taking the more expedient route of simply dening abstraction in terms of the combinators {S , K }. The cost is that extending K to a system with negation requires some kind of restriction on the principle of excluded middle. Hence, to accommodate the W combinator certain modications to the background logic must be made on pain of paradox. Prospects for developing a fragment of analysis in K are very good, as Fitch 1949, 1950, 1951 demonstrated in detail. By boldly highlighting the role of W in basic logic Fitch confronts the paradoxes as natural linguistic and logical phenomena rather than as pathologies which must be excised from the system. This attitude, in a much more radical form, is also found among proponents of dialetheism. Another advantage to keeping with Fitchs original presentation is that some results only depend on the functional behavior of W , B and B1 , and not on the membership/exemplication combinators and , that is, these results do not depend on the full power of abstraction but only a fragment.20 If the combinators S and K were used to effect abstraction then proofs of this type would appear to require much stronger combinatorial resources than they actually do. K is a nitary theory in the sense that it is always possible to determine in a nite number of applications of its dening clauses whether a particular U -expression is a thesis if it is indeed so. We use the familiar notation K to indicate that K ( is a provable thesis of K ). It is possible to present K proof-theoretically where the rule for = serves as the sole axiom scheme and the remaining rules are the rules of procedure. Implicit in the schemas dening K is an intensional equivalence relation (here denoted by ) factoring U -expressions according to whether they have identical truth-conditions relative to K . The intended relation is easily dened as the co-provability (in K ) of U expressions, for example, W & obviously obtains in the metatheory. A moments reection is enough to see that is an equivalence relation, indeed, from the set-theoretic
18 19
20
For example, one nds these combinators characterized in this way in substructural logics. It is assumed that the object theory is presented as a combinatorial calculus, so that (x , x ) is written as (( x )x ), that is, is a Curried relation. A proof of this type will appear in a forthcoming work.
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point of view its equivalence classes are elements of the associated Lindenbaum algebra generated by K s reduction relation. However, it is not possible to extend to a congruence which demonstrates the irreducibly intensional character of the logic.21 Fitch adopts a similar notation in A Simplication of Basic Logic and true instances of express what amounts to a truth-by-denition, a use also exploited by Fitch in his paper SelfReferential Relations. In the following section principles of abstraction will be expressed relative to the just introduced notation. Certain subsets of U may be intuitively represented in K , in the sense of the following natural denition: Definition 2.3 (Representation) A subset S of U -expressions is represented by a term s in K if for all u U
u S if and only if
u s .
Fitch establishes the following theorems in Representations of Calculi (published in 1944), where the second is essentially a corollary to the rst: Theorem 2.4 (The Turing Completeness of K ) The graphs of all partial recursive functions are K-representable and hence also all recursively enumerable sets of U expressions are K-representable (under an arithmetical encoding of U -expressions into combinatory numerals). Theorem 2.5 A system is a calculus (nitary system) if and only if it is K-representable (as a combinatory system), that is, all nitary inductive relations are K-representable and conversely. By Theorem 2.5, K is a universal calculus which can represent all nitary systems, including itself. Hence, K can represent Churchs lambda-calculus and rst-order logic, the undecidability of which immediately implies the undecidability of K . Incidentally K cannot represent its own set-complement (with respect to U ) so its complement cannot form a calculus and from the nitary standpoint it is inaccessible. The set-complement of K can be represented in K and for this reason K is not nitary. This may seem obvious since the rule for A is an -style rule but this disguises a subtle fact. Introducing bound variables to give a nitary version of K runs into the problem that its variables have a syntactically complex inner structure as U -expressions and the usual rule for universal introduction may not be truth-preserving since some properties involving the syntactic structure of a variable of basic logic are not general. A nitary metalanguage for K which avoids this problem was investigated by Myhill 1952 but not all of Fitchs results for K are provable within it (a fact which Myhill acknowledges). 3. A notation for abstraction in K A general description of the logical function of principles of abstraction is that they associate a term with some kind of higher-order entity (properties, logical classes, concepts), which brings reasoning about the latter under general reasoning involving the term structure
21
Cantini proves this fact for a system quite similar to basic logic by applying Gordeevs paradox (Cantini 1996, p. 74). A modication of this proof can be used to derive a similar result for basic logic, indeed, from the point of view of basic logic there are many non-identical empty classes.
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of the language.22 Apparently the latter kind of reasoning (relying as it does on facts of general syntax) is perfectly safe: we know, of course, that under mild assumptions that this is not the case. The reasoning associated with the paradoxes is not applicable to basic logic because abstracts (the products of abstraction) are treated as processes for classifying U -expressions and not all classications yield 2-partitions of the domain. In this respect Fitch is a so-called gap theorist when it comes to solving the traditional paradoxes. When unrestricted principles of abstraction are admitted without ad hoc restrictions then abstracts may fall under themselves, indeed, there are examples of non-trivial self-application in basic logic which shows that application very naturally models the selfexemplication relation of property theory. This is a form of genuine self-reference in the sense that self-application does not depend on an arithmetical coding scheme to simulate a type collapse, indeed, on this model U -expressions are best understood as universals whose multiplicity does not affect their unity as a single thing. The outstanding feature of K is that it has unlimited principles of abstraction and correspondingly unlimited comprehension principles for logical classes. On the present point of view logical classes bear a one-many relation to the things that fall under them rather than the one-one relation postulated by Freges Law V . Logical classes, unlike mathematical classes, are best understood as pluralities which bear a distributed form of reference to the items that fall under them. If logical classes are ontologically dependent on concepts, which in turn presumably depend on some kind of nite specication, then one pleasing philosophical consequence of K s unlimited abstraction principles is that basic logic correctly represents these dependencies as formal relationships. K and its various extensions are revealed to be ideal frameworks for investigating the complex interplay between abstraction, truth, propositions and representation via concepts. A principle of abstraction takes the following form in basic logic (recall the convention of the last section). Let be any context (possibly containing parameters p) which contains at least one occurrence of x and let be the primitive binary relation of exemplication or predication.23 A principle of abstraction yields a term, denoted in the metatheory by x .[(x , p)], which satises the condition, for all a U , a x .[(x , p)] (a, p). (2)
The metalinguistic notation (a, p) denotes the result of simultaneously substituting a for x in (usually parameters will be left implicit). Abstraction in the above form is intended to give the system means for expressing higher-order theses while still maintaining a certain degree of tractability resulting in a pleasing middle ground between rst- and second-order logic. Myhill in his 1984 paper Paradoxes claims that any instance of (2) determines an extra-linguistic intensional entity, namely a property (and not an extensional entity like a mathematical class or set) denoted by terms of the form x .[ ]. Somewhat polemically he calls Fitch-style abstraction Freges principle (p. 130). This is a rhetorical excess on Myhills part since Freges theory of abstraction is connected to extensionality, that is, concepts for Frege have an ontologically intimate relationship with extensions while Fitchs abstracts are highly intensional in nature.
22
23
For Fitch the term structure of abstracts is a reliable guide to the metaphysical structure of attributes (as assigned to objects by propositions) so the structure of terms mirrors the ontological structure of higher-order entities. Fitch did not mark this distinction explicitly he seemed to have thought abstracts (which are linguistic items) just are attributes, rather than denoting them. will be a U -expression which, in a particular application, may be a combinatory analog to a sentence in some formal language. Parameters may be drawn from U but in principle they may be assumed to be members of some set (possibly with ur-elemente). The clauses of basic logic will treat parameters as syntactic simples when they are not themselves U -expressions.
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The particular way in which Fitch treats abstraction is very far removed from the contemporary approach where abstraction operators are primitive terms which are to satisfy some antecedently given set of axioms (like comprehension, extensionality, or Humes principle). This methodology articially separates abstraction principles from the rest of the logic, and consequently the contemporary approach must make a special plea for the logical status of abstraction principles, or some privileged subset of them.24 In contrast, if K is already accepted as capturing some species of logical truth then Fitchs derived abstraction principles (as given in Theorem 3.1) will also, presumably, be counted as logical truths of the same species (it was suggested in the last section that these truths were analytic in the sense of being true-by-denition). An important desideratum of workers in the combinatory tradition is to show that bound variables are merely apparent and may be eliminated with no variation in the expressive power of the language.25 The abstracts introduced in this section take the form x .[ ] which appears to introduce bound variables in violation of this desideratum. However, this is merely apparent. Abstracts may be eliminated in favor of certain sequences of combinators (and and &) which effects a substitution operation (a somewhat similar procedure is found in Russells rst no class theory, his substitutional theory as discussed extensively in Landini 1998). The following theorems are often quite tedious and the proof of abstraction would be relatively mild if Fitch presented basic logic with the standard combinators S and K . As discussed in the last section, the combinator W of basic logic is involved with the traditional antinomies of class theory and its inclusion in basic logic highlights the fact that Fitch is willing to modify the background logic in order to accommodate unlimited abstraction as a logical principle. Another advantage to Fitchs original denition of basic logic over one using an apparently simpler combinatorial basis is that the combinators and make the expression of membership (or perhaps more properly called exemplication) a natural part of basic logic. Membership amounts to true substitution and the expression of this fact is nearly immediate in basic logic thanks to . plays a similar role for binary relations. The alternative of using S and K for dening abstraction would need a separate axiom to guarantee the intended meaning of membership and this is certainly undesirable, at least if membership is taken to be a logical notion which should require no special pleading as to this status (this agrees with Bealer 1982 where he claimed that exemplication is a basic part of logic but without the need to challenge the role of set theory in the study of intensional logic). The interpretation of abstracts as notations for representing properties and attributes (which Fitch repeatedly offers) becomes far more evident than it would otherwise be if abstraction is more than an artifact of the underlying combinatory algebra. A certain amount of tedium and inconvenience is therefore well worth the philosophical advantages if delity to Fitchs original presentation of basic logic is maintained. Fitch 1942 gives the following metatheoretic conventions, which are adopted in the following. The notation (. . . a . . .) will be used for an arbitrary U -expression in which a occurs at least once. The notation (. . . b . . .) when used in the same context as the previous is to be understood as the result of simultaneously substituting b for each occurrence of a in (. . . a . . .). Fitch also employs a notation for an innite stock of (free) variables w, x , y
24
25
See for example the papers in Hale and Wrights co-edited volume The Reasons Proper Study: Essays towards a Neo-Fregean Philosophy of Mathematics which outline the neo-logicist position in detail and attempts to make the case for the logicality of Humes principle, and the non-logicality of others apparently in the same company. See Schnnkel 1924, republished in the van Heijenoort volume, for the original presentation of the combinators and its motivation in developing the minimum basis necessary for presenting a logic; Quines commentary is also very useful.
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and z, possibly with numerical subscripts or accented.26 These variables are U -expressions which are not parts of each other (this may always be done) and they are distinct from the U -expressions used in dening K (W , B, B1 and so on). Acceptable substitution-instances of these variables are elements of U . The intended meaning of the notation (. . . x . . .) should be evident. Fitchs conventions are liable to produce some misunderstandings. The problems mostly have to do with some subtleties involving substitution, which Fitchs notation sometimes obscures. A very perspicuous notation for substitution which avoids these problems is easily discovered. If U , then the notation {x a} is to refer to the result of simultaneously substituting a for x in (x need not occur in for the notation to be meaningful), and similarly for {a b}.27 Finally, {x a, y b} is the result of simultaneously substituting a for x and b for y in . Note that {x a, y b} and {x a}{y b} need not result in the same expression.28 Fitch 1942 proves the following theorem, which shows that Fitchs basic operations form a combinatorially complete set:29 Theorem 3.1 For every U -expression there are U -expressions denoted in the metatheory by x .[ ] and x y .[ ] satisfying, for every a, b U , x .[ ]a {x a} x y .[ ]ab {x a, y b} which by the rules for and are equivalent to a x .[ ] {x a} ax y .[ ]b {x a, y b}. (3) (4) (Monadic abstraction) (Relational abstraction)
Both x .[ ] and x y .[ ] will be called by the common name abstracts. facilitates a canonical way to present binary relations R, namely, in the form aRb (which is represented in basic logic by aRb). It is important to note that x y .[ ]ab is not necessarily the same in meaning as x y .[ ](ab). The former, but not the latter, has the truth condition displayed in Theorem 3.1, while the latter may have no determinate truth condition at all. Finally, has the meaning conveyed in the last section, namely, as signifying equivalence of truth-conditions relative to K . The notation for abstracts which Fitch ultimately derives do not require the use of bound variables in spite of the apparent similarity between the RussellFitch notation for abstracts and the more familiar lambda-abstracts of Church. Despite appearances any occurrences of x in does not occur bound in either x .[ ] or x .[ ] simply because K lacks bound variables. This approach to variables (familiar from combinatory logic) liberates Fitchs theory from the tiresome need of distinguishing between free and bound occurrences of a variable in a given formula. Fitch begins the proof of Theorem 3.1 by establishing abbreviations for abstracts x .[ ] and x .[ ] in which x occurs exactly once in . It is evident that must be of one of the following forms, where x does not occur in f and g and has precisely one occurrence in hx : x , fx , hx f , f (ghx ), f (hx g). The denitions of x .[ ] and x .[ ] depend on which form takes:
26 27 28
29
These variables will, despite certain appearances, never occur as bound in a U -expression. A similar convention is adopted by Humberstone 2000. The notation {x a}{y b} is sequential substitution: rst substitute a for x in , then substitute b for y in {x a}. If a contains y then {x a}{y b} may be distinct from {x a, y b}. Fitchs notation for abstracts should be familiar to readers of Principia.
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Definition 3.2 Suppose x does not occur in f , g and has precisely one occurrence in hx . Then x .[ ] and x .[ ] are dened as follows: x .[x ] =df (W &) x .[fx ] =df f x .[hx f ] =df x .[ fhx ] .[Bfghx ] x .[ f (ghx )] =df x x .[ f (hx g)] =df x .[Bf hx g] x .[x ] =df B(W &) x .[ fx ] =df f x .[hx f ] =df x .[ f hx ] x .[ f (ghx )] =df x .[B1 fghx ] x .[ f (hx g)] =df x .[B1 fhx g]
Fitch notes that if y occurs n-times in and x occurs exactly once then y still occurs n times in both x .[ ] and x .[ ]. It is perhaps not clear how these abbreviatory devices are intended to function, since most of the introduced abstracts are dened in terms of other abstracts, and so on perhaps indenitely. How is it assured that the denitions are not circular or otherwise innitary? It is possible to extract an algorithm from the conventions given in Denition 3.2 which takes any U -expression which contains exactly one occurrence of x and outputs a term of the form ax , where x does not occur in a. The algorithm shufes the lone occurrence of x in to the far-right, encoding each step involved in this movement by a combinator (which will occur in a). a will be the abstract associated with Fitchs abbreviations in Denition 3.2. The algorithm which matches the left-hand column of Denition 3.2 is simple and always halts, as can be veried by referring to Figure 1. The abstract a outputted by the algorithm encodes a procedure for substituting a term into the position previously occupied by x in . Two examples should help clarify this. Example 1 x .[x ] =df W &. Then x .[x ]u (W &)u (&u)u u&u K u x {x u} Rule for W Rule for & logic substitution
Example 2 Let be (x ) , where x = . Then applying the algorithm will give B( )(B( )), which we take as the abbreviation for x .[(x ) ]. Then x .[(x ) ]u B( )(B( ))u ( )(B( )u) B( )u (u ) (u ) K ((x ) ){x u} Rule for B Rule for Rule for B Rule for substitution
These examples demonstrate that the combinators are used to encode an effective description of a procedure for the substitution of terms into a xed context.30
30
This fact is used in combinatory logic to model Churchs lambda-calculus.
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Figure 1. Algorithm for Abstraction in basic logic.
The next theorem shows that monadic abstraction over with respect to x holds when x occurs exactly once in : Theorem 3.3 (Fitch 1942) Let x occur exactly once in . Then for all u U , x .[ ]u {x u}. Proof The proof is by induction on the number n of symbols to the right of the occurrence of x in (counting parentheses as symbols).
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n = 0: Then is x itself, so x .[ ] is (W &) (see Example 1). n = 1: Then the symbol to the right of x is the right-most occurrence of ) in , so must be of the form (ax ) where x does not occur in a. Then x .[ ] will be a and x .[ ]u au ax {x u}. For the inductive step there are three cases. Since there are at least two symbols to the right of x in , must be of the form (bc). The possibilities for are exhausted by terms of the form (hx f ), f (ghx ), f (hx g): Case 1: = (hx f ). Then x .[ ] is x .[ fhx ]. Note that the occurrence of x in fhx has fewer symbols to its right than its occurrence in hx f so the result follows by the inductive hypothesis and the rule for : x .[ ]u x .[f hx ]u f (hx {x u}) hx {x u}f (hx f ){x u} by the inductive hypothesis rule for as x does not occur in f
Case 2: = f (ghx ). Then x .[ ] is x .[Bfghx ]. By inspection, it is clear that the occurrence of x in Bfghx has fewer symbols (in fact one less, again counting parentheses as symbols) to its right than its occurrence in (f (ghx )) so the result follows by the inductive hypothesis and the rule for B: x .[ ]u x .[Bfghx ]u Bfghx {x u} f (ghx {x u}) f (ghx ){x u} by the inductive hypothesis rule for B and fact x only occurs in hx as x does not occur in f , g
Case 3: = f (hx g). Then x .[ ] is x .[Bfhx g] and this in turn (by Denition 3.2) is x .[g(Bfhx )]. By inspection, it is clear that the occurrence of x in (( g)(Bfhx )) has fewer symbols to its right than its occurrence in (f (hx g)), so the result follows by the inductive hypothesis and the rules for and B: x .[ ]u x .[ g(Bf hx )]u g(Bf hx {x u}) Bf hx {x u}g f (hx {x u}g) f (hx g){x u} by the inductive hypothesis rule for rule for B since x does not occur in f , g
The terms of the form x .[ ], where x occurs exactly once in , is an intermediate notation which will be used to model relational abstraction and monadic abstraction over contexts which contain multiple occurrences of x . They have the following important property. Theorem 3.4 (Fitch 1942) Let x occur exactly once in . Then for all u, v U , x .[ ]uv {x u}v.
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Proof The proof is exactly analogous to the proof of Theorem 3.3. So far Fitch has established monadic abstraction for those contexts which contain a single occurrence of x . To extend this result to contexts containing multiple occurrences of x Fitch gives an additional abbreviation for abstraction over certain contexts: Definition 3.5 Suppose x occurs at least once in = (. . . x . . . x . . .) and also suppose that y occurs exactly once in (. . . x . . . y . . .); moreover, assume that every occurrence of x in the latter is to the left of the occurrence of y. Then x .[(. . . x . . . x . . .)] =df W y x .[(. . . x . . . y . . .)]
where expressions of the form y x .[ ] in turn abbreviate y .[ x .[ ]]. The role of W is to contract multiple instances of x (or duplicate them), and this useful role will be exploited in the following (see, for example, the proof of Theorem 3.7). Unfortunately a key step in Fitchs proof of unlimited abstraction in K is awed. Fitch wants to prove that if x occurs n + 1 times in then x .[ ]u {x u}. The proof is by induction on n, and a key step is to claim that, where (x x ) is the context representing , x .[(. . . x . . . u . . .)]u (. . . u . . . u . . .) holds by the inductive hypothesis. However, if x = u, then this fails since the inductive step cannot be taken (that is, the above claim will become precisely what Fitch needs to show). The problem is that Fitch requires that free variables be U -expressions and not merely range over them in a so far unspecied metatheory for K . Indeed, it is not at all clear at this stage how Fitch intends to provide a notation for x .[(xx )] or more generally for contexts in which x occurs exactly twice. In fact the reader may verify that W x .[x ] is a good proxy for representing x .[(xx )] in the sense that the desired applicative behavior of the latter is produced by the former. However, this trick does not generalize. One might attempt to dene, as in Denition 3.2, a series of abbreviations for x .[(xx )], x .[( fx )x ], x .[x ( fx )] and so on for every possible way in which x may occur exactly twice in some xed context. This is necessary since, for example, x .[(fx )x ] is not covered by Denition 3.5. However, an immediate problem arises. Consider (fx )x where x does not occur in f . To produce the corresponding abstraction with respect to x (where we need to produce a term of the form ax , where x does not occur in a) we must apply to yield x (fx ). From this the only other of Fitchs combinators that may be applied non-trivially31 is B, which yields B( x )fx , and none of Fitchs combinators may be applied to the latter. Things are much more promising in pure combinatory logic since one would simply apply S to x (fx ) yielding S fx . In this case, x .[(fx )x ] would be abbreviated by S f . However, since Fitch does not have S this move is not available. Fortunately, there is a solution which avoids the problem of extending Denition 3.2 to contexts containing more than one occurrence of x (which apparently requires additional combinators), but the solution requires the temporary use of genuine variables which are
31
We could of course apply again, and so on ad nauseum.
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distinct from any U -expressions. These variables may occur bound in certain expressions. The new stock of variables is only introduced in order to dene lambda-abstracts and Fitch essentially shows that for any abstract denable in the new vocabulary it is possible to dene a notation for an abstract in K which has exactly the same application behavior over U . This shows that abstraction is available in the object language without a detour through a metalanguage containing bound variables. This restores the combinatory traditions view that variables are nothing more than notational conveniences: in the present exercise they are ladders that can be kicked away. We will use the notation (. . . x . . . x . . .) for contexts where substituting U -expressions for all the variables x, x . . . in (. . . x . . . x . . .) always yields a U -expression. The system K is dened as follows.
Definition 3.6 (Denition of K ) The language of K properly extends the language of K by adding innitely many variables x, x , x . . . which are distinct from any U -expression (and do not contain any U -expression as a part), and by adding primitive abstraction terms of the form x.[ ], where ranges over the full language of K . It is assumed that lambda-abstracts are not U -expressions, and both the newly introduced variables and lambda-abstracts do not contain any U -expressions (that is, they are distinct as symbols). The new variables range over U (in this respect K is an interpreted language). The system K includes all the rules dening K along with the following schema for abstraction: x.[ ]v K {x v} K . K adds primitive notations for abstracts and the corresponding abstraction principles to K , and the variables are genuine (what Russell called umbral symbols or apparent variables). These variables are not eliminable within sentential contexts as in ordinary combinatory logic. K has abstraction as a primitive feature of its rule set, an obvious theft over the honest toil of actually showing that K has terms modeling the intended behavior of lambdaabstracts. What Fitch (1942) essentially shows is that for every lambda-abstract in the expanded language there is a corresponding Fitch abstract (either a notation corresponding to Denition 3.2 or Denition 3.5) denable in K which has the same application behavior when the respective terms are applied to U -expressions: Theorem 3.7 Let (. . . x . . . x . . .) be a context, where the last displayed occurrence of x is its right-most occurrence in the context (if it occurs more than once). Then, for all u U , where x .[(. . . x . . . x . . .)] is dened as in Denition 3.5 x.[(. . . x . . . x . . .)]u K x .[(. . . x . . . x . . .)]u K . Proof The proof is by induction on the number of occurrences m > 0 of x in (. . . x . . . x . . .). The proof is structurally the same as Fitch 1942 proof of his theorem 4.8. The base case m = 1 follows from Theorem 3.3. For m = n + 1 consider x.[(. . . x . . . x . . .)]u K (. . . u . . . u . . .) K x.[(. . . x . . . u . . .)]u K x .[(. . . x . . . u . . .)]u K by K -abstraction by K -abstraction as x is not part of u by the IH since u = x
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Eric Thomas Updike y x .[(. . . x . . . y . . .)]uu K W y x .[(. . . x . . . y . . .)]u K x .[(. . . x . . . x . . .)]u K by Theorem 3.4 W -rule by Denition 3.5
By K -abstraction and Theorem 3.7, we almost have monadic abstraction: {x u} K x .[ {x x }]u K . (5)
But note that if {x u} K (where {x u} U ) then this is only so because of rules already available in K . Indeed, it may be shown by a double induction on the length of proofs and the complexity of formulae that K is conservative over K .32 Hence, if {x u} U then {x u} K {x u} K . (6) Hence from Theorem 3.7, (6) and K -abstraction the following has been demonstrated: (u U )[ x .[ ]u {x u}] (7)
which is the rst part (monadic abstraction) of Theorem 3.1. To nish proving the second part of Theorem 3.1 (relational abstraction) Fitch introduces yet another denition: Definition 3.8 Suppose x occurs more than once in (. . . x . . .), where the latter context is a U -expression. Then x .[(. . . x . . .)] =df x .[ y.[ u.[(. . . u . . .)y]x ]]. Fitch wants to show that the new denition satises the condition given in Theorem 3.4 except that now x can occur more than once: x .[(. . . x . . .)]ab ((. . . a . . .)b). (8)
Again there is a problem with Fitchs proof since he assumes that in Denition 3.8 x , y, u are all U -expressions. This is catastrophic since, for example, Fitch claims in his attempted proof of Theorem 3.9 that y .[ u.[(. . . u . . .)y]a]b u .[(. . . u . . .)b]a (9)
follows from monadic abstraction. However this may fail if y occurs in a, which it may as y U . All that follows from monadic abstraction is the weaker claim y .[ u.[(. . . u . . .)y]a]b u .[(. . . u . . .){y b}b]a{y b}. (10)
The solution is to work in a language like K with genuine bound variables and then show that abstraction in the new theory yields abstracts which are co-extensive with abstracts denable in K (via Fitchs various denitions). To simplify the exposition we take the unFitchean step of assuming that x , y, u are not U -expressions (and do not contain any member of U nor are members of each other) and any expression of the form {x v} is always a
32
This is not quite right, since we have presented neither K nor K proof theoretically hence the appeal to proofs in the unspecied metatheory. However, the point should be clear enough.
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U -expression. These variables are being treated as a temporary convenience which may be eliminated in principle. The proof of the following is then an easy affair: Theorem 3.9 (Fitch 1942) x .[(. . . x . . .)]ab ((. . . a . . .)b). Proof The proof is an induction on the number of occurrences n of x in (. . . x . . .). For n = 1, the theorem follows by Theorem 3.4. For n = m + 1 we reason as follows: x .[(. . . x . . .)]ab x .[ y.[ u.[(. . . u . . .)y]x ]]ab y .[ u.[(. . . u . . .)y]a]b by Denition 3.8 by Theorem 3.4 by monadic abstraction by monadic abstraction
u .[(. . . u . . .)b]a (. . . a . . .)b
Note that the second step in the proof is valid because x occurs exactly once in x .[ y.[ u.[(. . . u . . .)]y]x ]. Nearly all the ingredients have now been gathered for proving relational abstraction. We only need the following lemma, which Fitch neglects to prove:33 Lemma 3.10 Let x , y occur at least once in . Then for all a U y .[ ]{x a} = y .[ {x a}]. (11)
Proof The proof requires a ne-grained analysis of the structure of abstracts, involving the denitions in 3.2, 3.5 and 3.8. Rather than attempting that here note that an abstract of the form y .[ ] has the same number of occurrences of x as the original (this may be proved by induction on the number of occurrences of y in ). The process of abstracting over with respect to y yields a term c which is a combination of combinators, x and other subexpressions of which lack y. This process moves y to the far right and removes duplications of y with the combinator W . The resulting abstract does not contain y and, as noted before, encodes an algorithm for substituting a term for y in . Abstraction is not sensitive to the structure of x or to any subexpression of which lacks y, in the sense that the abstracts y .[ ] and y .[ {x a}] are isomorphic (where only the application structure is being preserved). By the same reasoning y .[ ] and y .[ ]{x a} are isomorphic, hence also y .[ {x a}] and y .[ ]{x a}. However a moments reection should be enough to convince one that in fact y .[ {x a}] = y .[ ]{x a}. Theorem 3.11 (Fitch 1942) For all a, b, U , where x and y are distinct variables (in the sense discussed above) : x y .[ ]ab {x a, y b}.
33
Another reason why variables like x , y must not be U -expressions is that the lemma may fail otherwise. To see this, suppose x , y U where x and y do not occur as parts of each other (so, in particular, x = y). Let = yx . Then y .[ ] = x . So, y .[ ]{x y} = y but y .[ {x y}] = y .[(yy)] = W , and W = y as W = . Fitch did not seem to be aware of this problem. Because of this we must either work in a system like K and then show by an induction that an analogue to the lemma also holds for K or treat x , y as U -expressions which function as free variables (and these variables do not occur as parts of each other) and where we must stipulate that in the lemma a = x , y. This is a restriction on the substitution operation (and implicitly a restriction on abstraction).
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x y .[ ]ab y .[ ]{x a}b y .[ {x a}]b {x a}{y b} {x a, y b}
by Theorem 3.9 by Lemma 3.10 by monadic abstraction as y does not occur as part of a
Without question Fitchs proof of abstraction is not elegant and some of his reasoning is faulty. However it should be apparent that K is a work of a certain degree of genius Fitch has only postulated what is needed to prove abstraction and his notation ( in particular) guarantees that membership/exemplication is a part of logic (where by logic one means a maximally general and consistent system for representing all possible forms of reasoning). Rather than using the artice of separating the logic of membership (sets and classes) from the rest of logic Fitchs approach is integrative, offering quite remarkable formal power. 4. Comments on Fitchs theory of abstraction The proof of Theorem 3.1 can be extended to show that K has monadic and relational abstraction. In a monadic or relational abstract of Fitchs logic bound variables are being simulated they are entirely dispensable as in combinatory logic. Given the availability of monadic abstraction it is easy to introduce a notation for quantication modeling standard rst-order logics. Monadic abstracts intuitively represent classes (of U -expressions) and E and A assert, of particular classes, that they are non-empty or universal, respectively (this is their semantic description in model theoretic semantics). Fitch introduces the following abbreviations which recover the natural notation for existential quantication in K : (x )(. . . x . . .) =df E x .[. . . x . . .] (x , y)(. . . x . . . y . . .) =df (x )(y)(. . . x . . . y . . .) . . . and analogously for the introduction of for K . 3-ary abstraction in K and K is also available, by the following trick given by Fitch 1953, p. 319. Dene a 3-ary abstraction term as follows: B1 u z .[(x , y)[(. . . x . . . y . . . z . . .)&u = xy]] and then verify that the newly introduced term works as intended: B1 u z .[(x , y)[(. . . x . . . y . . . z . . .)&u = xy]]abc u z .[(x , y)[(. . . x . . . y . . . z . . .)&u = xy]](ab)c z .[(x , y)[(. . . x . . . y . . . z . . .)&ab = xy]]c (x , y)[(. . . x . . . y . . . c . . .)&ab = xy] (. . . a . . . b . . . c . . .) The last step is justied since ab = xy if and only if a = x and b = y. Fitch did not believe that basic logic had resources for representing abstraction in types higher than n = 3 (for example, he explicitly claims this in A Simplication of Basic Logic (p. 320)). However, it most evidently has this property. This may be shown explicitly by
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dening a general operator for effecting simultaneous substitution or by observing that simultaneous substitution may be dened recursively and K can represent all recursive relations in the natural numbers.34 Hence, there are abstracts denable in K and K of the form x 1x 2 . . . x n .[(x1 , x2 , . . . , xn )] which work in the expected way in the theory.35 Fitchs theory of abstraction is completely type-free, for example, the abstract =df x .[x = x ] obviously satises its own dening condition hence K . The algorithm given above for monadic abstraction may itself be encoded as a monadic abstract of basic logic and this abstract is self-exemplifying. The type-freeness of the theory makes it an adequate framework for developing ideas belonging to nave class theory and a well-founded universe of sets may be dened by interpreting membership as the partwhole relation of general syntax (sets under this interpretation are well-founded since expressions cannot literally contain themselves as proper parts). Details of how this is done must be deferred to future work. The abstracts of basic logic may be interpreted as rules for computing membership in a logical class, in particular, they are classications of U - expressions into disjoint (but not necessarily exhaustive) extensions and anti-extensions. Because of the type-freeness of the theory these classications can classify other classications, including themselves. In general, only K has resources for representing the so-called anti-extensions, and in general K is able to represent every inductive and co-inductive set in the natural numbers, as shown by Lorenzen and Myhill (1959). Abstracts may also be interpreted as properties, concepts, and other notations for intensional objects which have a complex inner structure matching the metaphysical structure of whatever they purportedly represent. Fitch did not seem to recognize a metaphysical barrier between abstracts and what they represent, or between name and thing signied: an abstract literally is a property or other repeatable entity. This is the basis for a robust logical realism which has an obvious counterpart in medieval theories of universals. K is a type-free higher order combinatory logic and relating its class notations to the mathematical notion of class or set may be useful. Let ZK be the structure of all K representable sets under inclusion. A description of this space is given as follows. The empty set may be represented in K by x .[x = (xx )] and the universe U by x .[x = x ]. All nite subsets of U are representable in K , for example, the subset {u0 , u1 , . . . , un } is K 1 . . . x n .[x0 = u0 x1 = u1 . . . xn = un ] (all co-nite subsets of U represented by x 0 x will be K -representable). If T1 , T2 U are K -represented by 1 , 2 , respectively, then their .[x 1 &x 2 ]. Similar union is K -represented by x .[x 1 x 2 ] and their intersection by x denitions will handle nite union and intersection of already represented sets. Associativity, commutativity, absorption, and distribution all work correctly when restricted to the members of K -representable sets. ZK , , then forms a bounded distributive lattice (under inclusion) with top and bottom interpreted as the universal and empty sets, respectively. With respect to the philosophy of mathematics Fitchs investigations exploit the connection between abstraction as dened in illative combinatory logic and those class abstraction principles which populate the early attempts at logistic reconstructions of classical mathematics.36 It may appear that this alleged connection makes a category mistake but the relationship between them has an historical basis found in Russells early work on logicism and in the work of Scott and Aczel. In a series of papers between Principles and
34
35 36
The proof of this fact is greatly facilitated by the availability of relational abstraction in K ; otherwise, the proof is nearly unmanageable. The expression x 1 x 2 . . . x n .[(x1 , x2 , . . . , xn )] is an abbreviation for x 1 .[ x2 .[. . . x n .[ ] . . .]]. Neo-logicists have not, to my knowledge, seriously examined illative combinatory logic as a way to recover some of the Fregean standpoint, indeed, Burgess (2005) does not seem to take the idea too seriously in his reconstruction and evaluation of their program.
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Principia Russell worked on systems which were type-free in the sense that type distinctions were not ad hoc restrictions on expressibility but naturally occur as built-in features of the grammatical structure of abstracts. In these papers, as Klement 2003 showed, Russell anticipated Churchs lambda-calculus (which can be modeled by combinatory logic and conversely). Indeed, Landini (1998) already took this investigation very far and he described Russells type-free systems as an intensional form of logicism wherein logical classes are dened relative to a substitution operator yielding principles of abstraction not dissimilar to Fitchs in effect.37 Scott (1975) investigated the relationship between abstraction in basic logic and general class theory (he lamented that the work of Fitch was not well known) and demonstrated that Fitchs combinatory systems were essentially term models in which a self-referential (and necessarily partial) theory of truth could be developed which contains a non-trivial fragment of the theory of logical classes.38 A few years later Aczel investigated what he called Frege structures. Frege structures are built over a model of the lambdacalculus giving a system which satises nave comprehension. Aczel used Frege structures to give an innovative analysis of the sources of Russells paradox in class theory, a source which was found in Freges claim that all propositions can be factored into the true and the false (propositions) rather than nding fault with either comprehension or abstraction. The historical scenes briey surveyed above suggests that abstraction in combinatory logic and its functional counterpart in the lambda-calculus have features congruent with the use of abstraction principles in logicism. As such, it is possible to draw meaningful comparisons between basic logic and a highly intensional form of logicism. In basic logic abstraction is a basic part of logic (where logic is understood in Fitchs sense as a universal calculus for the representation of all nitary theories, including itself, a theory which is presumed to survey the limits of representation). Abstraction is a general logical operation for the introduction of terms which intuitively represent properties and concepts in the sense that syntactical relations denable in K are structurally analogous (have the same application behavior) as property-exemplication and the falling-under relation. The unlimited power of abstraction in K is a model of the total conceptual freedom of the mathematician in the sense that no restriction on concepts is needed to tame the paradoxes. Since basic logic is a universal framework in which all and only all formal systems (including itself) are denable the formal properties of the resulting theory capture precisely the essential ingredients belonging to formal representation (in any language for any subject matter of interest). If moreover the theory contains some quantity of mathematics then at least some mathematics is presupposed in formalization, indeed, we nd that numbers are a basic part of our most general framework for the representation of thought linguistically since basic logic contains as a subtheory a combinatorial version of arithmetic. No special plea on behalf of numbers as logical objects is required their necessity is a feature grounded in the most basic forms of representation. Numbers are understood as part of the formal ontology and this level of ontological commitment does not make numbers so epistemically remote from human experience that reference to them becomes inscrutable.39
37
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Currys early work on the combinators was intended to give a precise analysis of the role of substitution in Principia. According to Landini the relevant analysis of substitution is found in Russells substitutional theory though some of the relevant work on this topic was only available posthumously, as rst reported in Grattan-Guinness 1974. Fitchs work on systems which contain their own truth-predicate, nearly unacknowledged by contemporary philosophers, preceded Kripkes own work by over a decade though it must be admitted that Kripkes work is elegant and clear while Fitchs formal work is unusually complex. The argument clearly has a transcendental avor and basic logic under this interpretation is a novel mixing of Fregean and Kantian themes. Note that this is not a version of the MaddyPutnamQuine indispensability arguments given in, for example, Maddy 1992, where the practical use of numbers in the sciences gives them a utility which is sufcient to imply their (merely contingent?) existence.
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True sentences of (combinatory) arithmetic would presumably be classied as synthetic rather than analytic in basic logic.40 They have this status in the sense that mathematics is a necessary feature of representation (part of the laws of thought in Freges nomenclature) and secures its objectivity from the fact that basic logic is a necessary precondition for our ability to work with concepts and combine them into a unied axiomatic form as a system for thinking about a particular subject domain. However, some of the Fregean standpoint is preserved in basic logic. Frege wanted above all else to secure arithmetic from any connection with Kantian intuition and Fitch shows how mathematics can be objective without assuming that its inter-subjective character depends on the possession of minds with a specic cognitive structure-all that is assumed is that nite creatures must work with concepts as they build coherent pictures of the universe. Some additional features of Freges logicism can be accommodated in basic logic in a way that maintains Freges contention that concepts and extensions are intimately related. In basic logic concepts have a dependency on denability in some formal language. Concepts are denoted by abstracts (under this interpretation) and to each concept is naturally associated an extension, namely, the set of U -expressions that it represents in K . The relationship between concepts and their extensions is such that everything in the extension necessarily has the associated concept, assuming concepts are dened without parameters which refer to contingent entities (note that the mapping from concepts to their associated extensions is, on this model, many-one, which relaxes some of the intensional features of the system). Unlike Freges theory basic logic handles properties in a completely type-free environment so there are meaningful instances of self-exemplication. If membership (in a class) is understood as true substitution then concepts in basic logic are akin to propositional functions. Rather than a metaphysical barrier obtaining between concepts and objects there is a semantic distinction between the use and mention of abstracts which are distinguished by the functional role of abstracts in the theory.41 As the number of abstracts (and hence properties) are countable there is no worry that projecting the higher-order domain of properties into the class of extensions will exhaust the latter. Any alleged concepts (arbitrary subsets of U ) which are left out of consideration would have to exceed denability by nitary resources and it is not clear that these answer to Freges use of the term of art concept as the denotations of predicate expressions.42 To the objection that concepts suffer a form of what Dummett calls indenite extensibility note that the W -combinator effects diagonalization, which is built right into basic logic, so the diagonalization operation is a kind of xed-point in basic logic that cannot be used to go outside the space of nitarily representable concepts. Let me briey compare Fitchs approach to abstraction with that of contemporary logicism. An important contrast with neo-logicism is that basic logic does not treat abstraction axiomatically. The axiomatic approach separates abstraction principles from the background logic the status of these principles (as logical or analytical) must be given a special plea, indeed, if the background logic is varied the stock of acceptable abstraction principles may correspondingly wax and wane. The neo-logicist starts with the Fregean claim that the second-order domain of concepts (now interpreted as arbitrary subsets of the domain of individuals) is disjoint from the
40 41 42
The version of logicism that basic logic instantiates is in this sense closer to Russells version than Freges. This could be explicitly modeled by using polymorphic typing as in Gilmore 2005. For Frege a concept is signied by incomplete predicate expressions and predicates are linguistic items. On the Fregean model concepts are propositional functions but it is not clear to me that Frege intended all arbitrary maps from the domain of individuals to the truth values to form the space of all concepts, though it is often said that the Russell paradox reveals this to be the case. This is wrong. The Russell paradox (and the generalized form of Cantors paradox) have easily derived analogues in theories with a substitution operator (and no corresponding theory of sets), as can be checked by examining their derivations.
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domain of individuals and the problem is to coordinate equivalencies about the former with objectual-identity statements between singular terms referring to individuals which stand as rst-order proxies to concepts.43 The neo-logicist understands by a principle of abstraction a factoring of higher-order concepts under an equivalency between them and a choice of representatives in the domain of individuals for each equivalence class. Formally, an abstraction operator is a function FR : D2 D1 , where D1 is the domain (of individuals), D2 P (D1 ) and R is an equivalence on D2 , which satises for all X , Y D2 44 FR (X ) = FR (Y ) R(X , Y ). A principle of abstraction is dened as a choice for FR which satises AbR . It is well known that not all principles of abstraction are consistent, and nor are all instances of AbR pairwise consistent with each other. On this view of things the abstracts are representable as singular terms of the form FR (X ) and it is understood that the denotations of abstracts fall under the range of the rst-order quantiers. The mathematical characterization of abstraction principles which are dened by some formula of second-order logic is of great interest since the strength of such principles depends on what kinds of parameters (if any) are allowed in denitional matrices. Note nally that logic is prior to abstraction on the neo-logicist view the implication structure is not affected by which abstraction principles are taken as mathematically signicant. Among all possible principles of abstraction only a very few will be classied as logical by the neo-logicists. Humes principle, which relates equinumerosity between two concepts with the identity of their number, is so privileged since by Freges Theorem the Peano axioms can be inferred from relational second-order logic from Humes principle and suitable denitions of arithmetical notions in second-order logic. Freges inconsistent Law V was used to derive Humes principle (which is consistent) and if the latter is a logical notion then a substantial component of Freges philosophy of arithmetic is recovered as a plausible view. Humes principle is dened formally as follows. For any relation R(X , Y ) between concepts X , Y let R be the rst-order statement (where the background language has second-order free variables) which expresses that R is a 11 correspondence between X and Y (this obviously yields an equivalence between concepts). Then Humes principle (HP) is the following second-order sentence: #X =c #Y (R)(X R Y ). According to Hale and Wright 2001, 2009 this biconditional expresses an implicit denition of the cardinality operator (#), indeed, identities involving this operator are coordinated with statements already understood (the right-hand side of HP). Moreover, and this is most important, we can now exploit this prior ability [of understanding the right hand side of HP] in such a way as to get to know of identities and distinctions among the referents of the [#]-terms entities whose existence is assured by the truth of suitable such identity statements (Hale and Wright 2009, p. 179). From the fact that every set S is equinumerous with itself (as witnessed by the identity function restricted to S ) it follows on this view that the truth of #S =c #S guarantees that the singular term #S is a genuinely referential expression. To gain its status as part of logic a candidate principle of abstraction must satisfy an additional mathematical constraint since there are many other candidate principles of abstraction
43
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The distinction between concepts and individuals is not metaphysical but is made relative to a choice of individuals. What are concepts in one framework may function as individuals in another. This denition is taken from Antonelli 2010 (p. 3).
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(like those yielding order and isomorphism types) which seem to do a great deal of mathematical work and as they enjoy near universal application they might be viewed as being in the same good company as Humes principle.45 This additional constraint on instances of AbR to be counted as logical is the preservation of the identity/non-identity between abstracts under arbitrary permutations of the domain of individuals, which meets Tarskis criterion for logicality.46 Humes principle does indeed satisfy Tarskis criterion since the cardinality of a set is preserved under every permutation of the domain of individuals while order types do not have this property since a permutation of, say, the natural numbers in their natural order may yield a new well-ordering with order type + 1. Note that the argument that order types are not logical objects under Tarskis criterion must assume that some well-ordered sets are innite since all well-orderings of a nite set share the same underlying order-type. It is well-known that HP is only sound with respect to innite models so the previous consideration is no worry to the neo-logicist though of substantial worry to those with more nitist sympathies. Tarskis criterion has disastrous consequences on Fitchs understanding of abstraction. Fitchs abstracts contain logically signicant inner structure (as canonical names for concepts and properties) and arbitrary permutations of the domain will not respect this feature of the logic. This inner structure becomes accessible by applying Fitchs principles of abstraction and these principles will fail to yield materially true equivalencies under Tarskis criterion. Abstracts are complex terms which encode an algorithm or other classicatory process for determining membership or exemplication in a class or satisfaction by a property. For example, combinatory numerals (like Churchs numerals) treat numbers are indices marking stages of an unfolding iterative process, marking explicitly the role of numbers in iterated functional applications.47 In contrast to combinatory numerals the products of Humes principle, whatever they are, satisfy an essential ingredient of a cardinal assignment function (relating it to equinumerosity) without giving any indication of their mathematical structure (which could be transitive sets of transitive sets in a well-founded universe, Zermelos numbers, initial ordinals, alephs, or some other cardinal representation in set theory). Evidently the cardinal numbers yielded by HP have no logically or mathematically signicant inner structure. The latest neo-logicist defense argues not so much for the logicality of Humes principle as such but rather etextitasizes its role as a sortal concept in arithmetic, in particular, its role in xing the intended meaning of identity claims where both the identied relata are of the form the number of C s, for C a concept. Humes principle is supposed to enjoy a privileged kind of analyticity, privileged because unlike analytic truths involving descriptive constants like the predicate x is a bachelor Humes principle xes a crucial part of the semantics for the language of arithmetic by guaranteeing that number terms (of the form above) bear genuine reference to numbers understood as logical objects. Arithmetical discourse is meaningful to the extent that its numerical terms refer to the latter, and this reference is mediated by Humes principle as a kind of Fregean sense. This is an admirable defense but there is the persistent worry that the practical utility of a cardinal scale is to measure the sizes of some frequently encountered sets like R. However, this cardinal scale can vary with remarkable ease, consistent with ZFC, under modest constraints. For example, the continuum function 2 of ZFC restricted to regular
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The problem with adding order types as logical objects is nding a principled way to avoid the BuraliForti paradox while also admitting transnite order types as genuine entities. This criterion is supposed to ensure the independence of a logical principle from the nature of the individuals, insuring the priority of logic over metaphysics. The cardinal notion of number can also be developed within basic logic by using the techniques of Myhill 1952.
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cardinals can behave in any way consistent with Knigs Theorem (this result is due to Easton; an accessible proof is given in Jech 2002 (p. 232). Humes principle, on the other hand, will yield a rigid cardinal scale but to actually calibrate the scale against, say, R, one must bring in strong set-existence assumptions (or work in a particular kind of universe, like Gdels constructible universe L ). Surely, it is no controversy to observe that these are extra-logical assumptions, but some such assumption must be made to ensure that Humes principle yields the correct stock of mathematical truths understood as necessary truths of logic. If the concept of necessity is to be dispensed with it is not so clear why Humes principle is not classied as a synthetic principle and the revival of logicism merges into Kantianism. The neo-logicist will likely counter that all Humes principle is intended to do is to guarantee that cardinals are logical objects, not x a scale actually useful in mathematical practice. Such a defense depends on a radically anti-vericationist criterion for meaning, in particular, meaning involves nothing more than reference to a particular class of objects mediated, it is alleged, by Humes principle. The space of functions used to witness equinumerosity claims is given no further description beyond their role in dening HP.48 If Humes principle involves the notion of analyticity and allied concepts like necessity it is very hard to see how to accommodate such a view with the apparent plasticity found in the notion of cardinality, as witnessed by Eastons theorem, without insisting that the standard axiomatization of set theory is faulty. It is doubtful that the neo-logicist wants to encourage radical reform of mathematical practice, indeed, the desideratum is merely to show that mathematics (as ordinarily understood) is at root logical. The attempt to show this by taking a detour through a general semantic theory involving genuine reference to cardinals must also verify that there is a single intended (class) model (which goes way beyond the requirement of categoricity) for set theory which settles questions of cardinality independently of strong set existence principles. If this is not done, then the nal verdict on the neo-logicist endeavor is that their philosophical defense of HP confuses a necessary condition for developing a cardinal assignment function in set theory with a sufcient condition much more work must be done in order to get a sufciently ne-grained theory of cardinality as rich as its counterparts in higher set theory, the natural target, one would think, of a suitably modern logistic reduction of mathematics to logic.49 Working in an interpreted second-order theory with extensions might seem to defeat these claims against neo-logicism but categoricity does not calibrate the cardinal scale in a way
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Presumably the space of witnessing functions is all of them, where all is not relativized. Antonelli (2010) presents a very clear explication of permutation invariance as a principled way to pick out a distinguished class of abstraction principles as logical. He distinguishes several ways in which permutation invariance may be applied in an analysis of abstraction. In his philosophical assessment of his results Antonelli describes abstraction principles as applying inationary pressure on the size of the rst-order domain but also deationary pressure (running the abstraction principle in reverse, metaphorically speaking) on the size of the second-order domain. Finding the right balance (between hyper-ne grained abstraction like Freges inconsistent Law V ) and coarser grained notions (like Humes principle) yields an instrumentalist, not logical, conception of abstraction. The objects yielded by abstraction are simply representatives from some equivalence class the choice among representatives is simply an instrument for coordinating between the size of the rst- and second-order domains. We are then free, according to Antonelli, to effect whatever instrumental choices have the desired mathematical outcomes there are no worries about things like the Bad Company objection in this form of instrumentalism. The so-called abstracts play no privileged ontological or epistemological role. Antonellis commentary liberates abstraction from service to particular philosophical conceptions of it, including neo-Fregean philosophy of mathematics, a separation perhaps long overdue. If Antonelli is correct I cannot see neo-logicism continuing as a distinct philosophy of mathematics it has not been refuted, of course, but from the mathematical point of view its contribution is absorbed into a much larger mathematical project classifying consistent abstraction principles with respect to proof-theoretic strength (in the spirit, I take it, of the analysis of subsystems of second-order arithmetic). This would be a most worthy project.
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that isnt question begging or involve mysterious appeals to Gdelian intuitions. How does one argue in pure logic that the cardinality of the continuum just is , for some ordinal > 0? The mathematician need hardly care that the English expression The number of reals is a genuinely referential singular term since outside small intuitionist circles this was never in doubt. The second-order approach does not have the mathematical tools necessary for rening the cardinal scale in contrast to the rich tools developed in contemporary set theory (for example, those used in the elegant apparatus for forcing generic extensions of transitive models of ZFC). If the latter mathematical constructions are viewed as non-logical, then I think it is safe to say that neo-logicism as a coherent philosophy of mathematics will falter as it is extended into the higher reaches of subsystems of arithmetic.50 Fitchs approach to abstraction is happily free from these anxieties. Fitchs abstracts are mixed in with other logical principles, indeed, it will no doubt be noticed that abstracts are not part of the primitive notation of basic logic but are derived from the dening clauses of K itself and have whatever logical status these original principles have. There is no conict with contemporary mathematical practices. Fitchs basic logic is an admirable example of the principle of tolerance which was a guiding philosophical, social, and political tenet of the now nearly forgotten Unity of Science Movement, a movement which Fitch appears to have harbored sympathies.51 As a metatheory basic logic provides unlimited abstraction over any theory of interest. The metatheoretical role of abstracts is to yield additional logical information about the languages of science and mathematics, rooted in the common framework provided by K . There are two obvious objections to what has been said so far. First, it seems that Fitch must plea for the logical status of the combinators before assessing the logical status of abstraction principles. A way to respond to this is to rst note that abstraction as understood by Fitch is universal and the role of the combinators as universal operators is to facilitate the denition of abstraction in the theory. Fitch might have simply assumed abstraction as a primitive operation at the beginning though as I have tried to argue above there is some philosophical cost to bear in doing this. If basic logic is a nominalistic metatheory, that is, a pre-logic prior to formalization, then the combinators simply re-arrange, duplicate, or eliminate terms as part of a description of syntax. These descriptions are a necessary concomitant to the practice of axiomatization. As meta-syntax the combinators are not controversial and basic logic may be understood as a nominalist metatheory for the formal sciences. The second objection is that it is well known that abstraction must be isolated from the classical conception of implication because of the Curry paradox. Hence, abstraction must be elevated, by a special plea, to the status of a logical principle and the theory of implication modied in the light of this declaration. One response to the objector is to adopt logical pluralism, in particular, the theory of implication is not developed in isolation but in conjunction with the theory of inference. The two are connected together by the deduction theorem. If the substructural part of the logic is not classical (for example, in some deductive systems permutation of premises do not always preserve truth) the resulting theory of implication will be modied accordingly. Since basic logic is a metatheory for all (nitary) formal theories (and recall that these theories, like basic logic, are simply classes of U -expressions) then the lack of an object language sign for implication is necessary at the level of basic logic since otherwise its implication structure will be mistaken as universal. A genuine notion of implication for basic logic which does not have this problem
50
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Consistent fragments of Freges theory have been calibrated against the analytic hierarchy, see especially the paper by Ferreira and Wehmeier Ferreira and Wehmeier 2002 On the Consistency of the 1 1 -CA Fragment of Freges Grundgesetze. Fitchs teacher was F. S. C. Northrop.
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was given in Myhill 1984. Another reason for the priority of abstraction over implication is that abstraction is a vehicle for the expression of concepts which have semantically signicant internal structure as given by a nite specication. These concepts may well involve paradoxes or have ungrounded truth-conditions for their satisfaction by objects. If a classical theory of implication is simply adopted in advance then it will, in conjunction with the abstraction principles, expose this inner structure to external logical analysis. This yields the Curry paradox in a classical theory of implication with abstraction. The priority of abstraction over implication and the theory of inference is simply the priority of concepts over the formal machinery, a view found in both Frege and Russell. From this point of view mathematical progress always involves conceptual change, changes which may even call for modication of the underlying theory of implication, an idea worked out by Aitken and Barrett in their program of algorithmic logic in a way that conforms to many Fitchean insights about logic. Acknowledgements
The present study is the rst part of an ongoing research program on Fitchs basic logic. I thank Aldo Antonelli, Jeff Barrett and Kai Wehmeier for their comments on an earlier version of this work, and for their strong encouragement and support for what is sometimes a frustrating endeavor. I must also thank Wayne Aitken for introducing me to Fitchs program (which he re-discovered in the course of developing algorithmic logic, in collaboration with Jeff Barrett), and from whom I learned a great deal about abstraction as understood by a native mathematician. Finally, I thank the two anonymous referees for their very helpful suggestions.
References
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History and Philosophy of Logic