Dualities in modal logic

Abstract

Categorical dualities are an important tool in the study of (modal) logics. They offer conceptual understanding and enable the transfer of results between the different semantics of a logic. As such, they play a central role in the proofs of completeness theorems, Sahlqvist theorems and Goldblatt-Thomason theorems. A common way to obtain dualities is by extending existing ones. For example, Jonsson-Tarski duality is an extension of Stone duality. A convenient formalism to carry out such extensions is given by the dual categorical notions of algebras and coalgebras. Intuitively, these allow one to isolate the new part of a duality from the existing part. In this thesis we will derive both existing and new dualities via this route, and we show how to use the dualities to investigate logics. However, not all (modal logical) paradigms fit the (co)algebraic perspective. In particular, modal intuitionistic logics do not enjoy a coalgebraic treatment, and there is a general lack of duality results for them. To remedy this, we use a generalisation of both algebras and coalgebras called dialgebras. Guided by the research field of coalgebraic logic, we introduce the framework of dialgebraic logic. We show how a large class of modal intuitionistic logics can be modelled as dialgebraic logics and we prove dualities for them. We use the dialgebraic framework to prove general completeness, Hennessy-Milner, representation and Goldblatt-Thomason theorems, and instantiate this to a wide variety of modal intuitionistic logics. Additionally, we use the dialgebraic perspective to investigate modal extensions of the meet-implication fragment of intuitionistic logic. We instantiate general dialgebraic results, and describe how modal meet-implication logics relate to modal intuitionistic logics.