Preservationist logics and nonmonotonic logic

Martin Allen

Abstract

Any number of distinct logical consequence-relations can be represented in preservationist terms---as preserving one or more properties of sets of sentences---providing a general and abstract perspective from which to consider theories of consequence. One simple way of defining such consequence-relations, however, yields ones that are always strictly monotonic. At the same time, many nonmonotonic logics do not seem to be motivated by any concern for preservation, at least not in the way that truth-preservation is central to classical logic. It is shown that a wide class of nonmonotonic logics can in fact be characterized---at least partially---in preservationist terms. 

@InProceedings{Allen02,
  author = 	 {Martin Allen},
  title = 	 {Preservationist Logics and Nonmonotonic Logic},
  booktitle =    {Proceedings of the Student Session, 
                  First North American Summer School in Logic, Language, and Information ({NASSLLI}-02)},
  year = 	 2002,
  address = 	 {Palo Alto, CA}
}

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