Löb's Lemma: an easier approach to Löb's Theorem

[-]tristanhaze3yΩ592

Why is it OK to use deduction theorem, though? In standard modal logics like K and S5 the deduction theorem doesn't hold (otherwise you could assume P, use necessitation to get []P, and then use deduction theorem to get P -> []P as a theorem).

[-]Andrew_Critch3yΩ240

Well, the deduction theorem is a fact about PA (and, propositional logic), so it's okay to use as long as means "PA can prove".

But you're right that it doesn't mix seamlessly with the (outer) necessitation rule. Necessitation is a property of " $⊢$ ", but not generally a property of " $X ⊢$ ". When PA can prove something, it can prove that it can prove it. By contrast, if PA+X can prove Y, that does mean that PA can prove that PA+X can prove Y (because PA alone can work through proofs in a Gödel encoding), but it doesn't mean that PA+X can prove that PA can prove Y. This can be seen by example, by setting $X = Y = \neg □ (1 = 0)$ ".

As for the case where you want $⊢$ to refer to K or S5 instead of PA provability, those logics are still built on propositional logic, for which the deduction theorem does hold. So if you do the deduction only using propositional logic from theorems in $⊢$ along with an additional assumption X, then the deduction theorem applies. In particular, inner necessitation and box distributivity are both theorems of $⊢$ for every $A$ and $B$ you stick into them (rather than meta theorems about $⊢$ , which is what necessitation is). So the application of the deduction theorem here is still valid.

Still, the deduction theorem isn't safe to just use willy nilly along with the (outer) necessitation rule, so I've just added a caveat about that:

Note that from $X ⊢ A$ we cannot conclude $X ⊢ □ A$ , because $□$ still means "PA can prove", and not "PA+X can prove".

Thanks for calling this out.

[-]philh3yΩ692

It might be worth being explicit that ⊢ has lower precedence than the other operators (which in some sense are part of a different language). I, like maybe Gurkenglas, spent some time wondering why wasn't just a special case of necessitation.

I'm confused by your use of the deduction theorem. It's only used in the forward implication argument, and seems unnecessary to me. (The linked wiki article doesn't mention it.) More precisely, it only seems necessary to move things left-to-right across a turnstyle, because you've previously moved them right-to-left in a way that isn't obviously-to-me valid.

(I mean, it's obvious to me that if we can prove that A implies B, then assuming A lets us prove B. But it would also be obvious to me that if assuming A lets us prove B, we can prove that A implies B, yet you dedicated a theorem to allowing that. And I don't trust things that are obvious to me to be actually "true", let alone valid moves here.)

We can just make the whole argument without doing that and it seems fine to me? Looking at it in more depth:

(This does require that we can do logic with the things we've proved. E.g. if we have $⊢ x$ and $⊢ x \to y$ , we can conclude $⊢ y$ . I think that's okay, but seems worth being explicit about.)

$□ Ψ ⊢ □ □ Ψ$ by internal necessitation ( $□ Ψ \to □ □ Ψ$ ).

This is just doing the thing I question.

$□ Ψ ⊢ □ (□ Ψ \to p)$ using box distributivity on the assumption, with $A = Ψ$ and $B = □ Ψ \to p$ .

The assumption is $⊢ Ψ \leftrightarrow (□ Ψ \to p)$ , i.e. $⊢ A \leftrightarrow B$ . Weaken it and use necessitation to get $⊢ □ (A \to B)$ . Box distributivity is $⊢ □ (A \to B) \to (□ A \to □ B)$ . From those two, we can get $⊢ □ A \to □ B$ . Expanding again, this is $⊢ □ Ψ \to □ (□ Ψ \to p)$ .

$□ Ψ ⊢ □ p$ from 1 and 2 by box distributivity.

Box distributivity lets us go from $⊢ □ (□ Ψ \to p)$ to $⊢ □ □ Ψ \to □ p$ . So using 2, we have $⊢ □ Ψ \to (□ □ Ψ \to □ p)$ . And internal necessitation gives us $⊢ □ Ψ \to □ □ Ψ$ , so combining those, $⊢ □ Ψ \to □ p$ .

$⊢ □ Ψ \to □ p$ from 3 by the deduction theorem.

No need for this, we already finished.

[-]Andrew_Critch3yΩ240

It's true that the deduction theorem is not needed, as in the Wikipedia proof. I just like using the deduction theorem because I find it intuitive (assume , prove $B$ , then drop the assumption and conclude $A \to B$ ) and it removes the need for lots of parentheses everywhere.

I'll add a note about the meaning of $⊢$ so folks don't need to look it up, thanks for the feedback!

[-]philh3y97

Thanks, that makes sense. And the added explanation helps a lot, I can see the argument for going from to $A ⊢ B$ now:

PA proves $A \to B$ ;
So PA + $A$ certainly proves $A \to B$ , since it can prove everything PA can;
Also, PA + $A$ proves $A$ ;
So we have $A ⊢ A \land (\neg A \lor B)$ ;
Which in turn gives us $A ⊢ B$ .

[-]quetzal_rainbow3yΩ140

Can you explain more formally what is the difference between and $□$ ? I've looked in Wikipedia and in Cartoon Guide on Löb's theorem, but still can't get it.

[-]Andrew_Critch3yΩ120

I've now fleshed out the notation section to elaborate on this a bit. Is it better now?

In short, is our symbol for talking about what PA can prove, and $□$ is shorthand for PA's symbols for talking about what (a copy of) PA can prove.
" $⊢$ 1+1=2" means "Peano Arithmetic (PA) can prove that 1+1=2". No parentheses are needed; the " $⊢$ " applies to the whole line that follows it. Also, $⊢$ does not stand for an expression in PA; it's a symbol we use to talk about what PA can prove.
" $□ (1+1=2)$ " basically means the same thing. More precisely, it stands for a numerical expression within PA that can be translated as saying " $⊢$ 1+1=2". This translation is possible because of something called a Gödel numbering which allows PA to talk about a (numerically encoded version of) itself.
" $□ X$ " is short for " $□ (X)$ " in cases where " $X$ " is just a single character of text.
" $X ⊢ Y$ " means "PA, along with X as an additional axiom/assumption, can prove Y". In this post we don't have any analogous notation for $□$ .

[-]quetzal_rainbow3y30

Thank you, it's much more clear now.

[-]Algon3y20

A set of axioms within a vanilla first-order-logic language does not necessarily allow for the ability to speak about what statements are provable from $Σ$ within that language. Consider the axioms scheme $\forall x \forall y (x = y)$ . There's not enough strength in $Σ$ to create encodings of statements, which is neccesary to make formal statements in the language which could be interpreted in some standard model to mean "Statement X is provable". Seriously, try doing it. It should clear things up the need to build in some notion of provability into the syntax and semtantics of a logic if you want to talk about provability within a language. Then read upto section 3 in this SEP article.

EDIT: That is assuming you know stuff about provability predicates already, and things like arithmetization. If you don't, then the above exercise is way too hard. In that case, I'd just say that $Σ ⊢ ψ$ and $Σ ⊢ □ (ψ)$ represent "axioms $Σ$ proves statement $ψ$ " and "axioms $Σ$ proves that $ψ$ is provable in some set of axioms T". T is a "sufficiently strong" set of axioms, like Peano arithmetic, which can do interesting things.

[-]Gurkenglas3yΩ120

It seems important to clarify the difference between From ⊢A, conclude ⊢□A and ⊢□A→□□A. I don't feel like I get why we don't just set conclude := → and ⊢:=□.

[-]Andrew_Critch3y*Ω130

Well, is just short for $\neg A \lor B$ , i.e., "(not A) or B". By contrast, $A ⊢ B$ means that there exists a sequence of (very mechanical) applications of modus ponens, starting from the axioms of Peano Arithmetic (PA) with $A$ appended, ending in $B$ . We tried hard to make the rules of $⊢$ so that it would agree with $\to$ in a lot of cases (i.e., we tried to design $⊢$ to make the deduction theorem true), but it took a lot of work in the design of Peano Arithmetic and can't be taken for granted.

For instance, consider the statement $\neg □ (1 = 0)$ . If you believe Peano Arithmetic is consistent, then you believe that $\neg □ (1 = 0)$ , and therefore you also believe that $□ (1 = 0) \to (2 = 3)$ . But PA cannot prove that $\neg □ (1 = 0)$ (by Gödel's Theorem, or Löb's theorem with $p = (1 = 0)$ ), so we don't have $⊢ □ (1 = 0) \to (2 = 3)$ .

[-]philh3y27

To check, are you reading the second as ? It's meant to be $⊢ (□ A \to □ □ A)$ .

[-]Gurkenglas3y20

Nah.

[-]Algon3y10

How would the semantics for that work out?

[-]Gurkenglas3y27

⊢ already is to □ as □ is to quoted □. If we redo the post one □ further in, we never need external necessitation. Not sure if that answers your question.

[+][comment deleted]3y20

[-]transhumanist_atom_understander3mo10

I remember this by analogy to Curry's paradox.

Where the sentence from Curry's paradox says "If this statement is true, then ", $Ψ$ says "if this statement is provable, then $p$ ", that is, $□ Ψ \to p$ .

In Curry's paradox, if the sentence is true, that would indeed imply that $p$ is true. And with $Ψ$ , the situation is analogous, but with truth replaced by provability: if $Ψ$ is provable, then $p$ is provable. That is, $□ Ψ \to □ p$ .

But, unlike in Curry's paradox, this is not what $Ψ$ itself says! Replacing truth with provability has attenuated the sentence, destroyed its ability to cause paradox.

If only $□ p \to p$ , then we would have our paradox back... and that's Löb's theorem.

This is all about $□ Ψ \to □ p$ , just about one direction of the biimplication, whereas the post proves not just that but the other direction. It seems that only this forward direction is used in the proof at the end of the post though.

[-]Jason Gross3y10

I think this factoring hides the computational content of Löb's theorem (or at least doesn't make it obvious). Namely, that if you have , then Löb's theorem is just the fixpoint of this function.

Here's a one-line proof of Löb's theorem, which is basically the same as the construction of the Y combinator (h/t Neel Krishnaswami's blogpost from 2016):

löb (f) := let ψ := (λ ψ : Ψ . f (ψ .fwd (‘ ‘ ψ ")) in ψ .bak (ψ)

where $‘ ‘ ψ "$ is applying internal necessitation to $ψ$ , and .fwd (.bak) is the forward (reps. backwards) direction of the point-surjection $Ψ \leftrightarrow (□ Ψ \to p)$ .

LESSWRONG
LW

LESSWRONG
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Löb's Lemma: an easier approach to Löb's Theorem

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Löb's Lemma: an easier approach to Löb's Theorem

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