Modalities as interactions between the classical and the intuitionistic logics

Abstract

We give an equivalent formulation of topological algebras, interpreting S4, as boolean algebras equipped with intuitionistic negation. The intuitionistic substructure—Heyting algebra—of such an algebra can be then seen as an “epistemic subuniverse”, and modalities arise from the interaction between the intuitionistic and classical negations or, we might perhaps say, between the epistemic and the ontological aspects: they are not relations between arbitrary alternatives but between intuitionistic substructures and one common world governed by the classical (propositional) logic. As an example of the generality of the obtained view, we apply it also to S5. We give a sound, complete and decidable sequent calculus, extending a classical system with the rules for handling the intuitionistic negation, in which one can prove all classical, intuitionistic and S4 valid sequents.