The decidability of normal K5 logics

Abstract

The literature on modal logic includes a number of general completeness and decidability results. The work of Schiller Joe Scroggs [5], R.A. Bull [1], Kit Fine [2], and Krister Segerberg [6] provide examples.Scroggs showed that the proper extensions of S5 have the finite model property and are axiomatizable. (Harrop [3] then argued that logics having these properties are decidable.) Bull extended Scroggs' result by showing that the normal extensions of S4.3 have the finite model property. Fine subsequently provided a model-theoretic proof of Bull's result and also proved the axiomatizability of these logics. In a different direction Segerberg proved that every normal logic containing the characteristic axioms of Lewis' systems S4 and S5 is decidable.The present paper is in this tradition. We extend the results of Scroggs and Segerberg by showing that every normal modal logic containing the S5 axiom has the finite model property, is axiomatizable, and thus is decidable.