Right Weakening and Right Contraction in LK


Sachio Hirokawa
Laboratory of Computer Science, Kyushu University, Ropponmatsu 4-2-1, Fukuoka 810, JAPAN.
hirokawa@rc.kyushu-u.ac.jp


Abstract

Gentzen's sequent calculus has two kinds of inference rules -- the logical rules and the structural rules. There are three kinds of structural rules -- the exchange rule, the weakening rule and the contraction rule on both sides of a sequent. Logics that have some of the left structural rules and the none of the right structural rules determine substructural logics of intuitionistic logic LJ. If we consider classical logic LK and its structural rules, there are $2^4 = 16$ possible combinations of structural rules assuming the exchange rules on both sides. This paper, however, shows that the right weakening rule and the right contraction rule can not be separated. Moreover it is shown that if a logic contains both, it contains the right weakening rule and the right contraction rule. Thus the weakening rule and the contraction rule have different features on the left and on the right of a sequent. It follows that the set of provable formulas in any such substructural logic of LK is identical to that of either LK, LJ, BCK-logic, relevant logic R or linear logic.
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