This is an archived course. A more recent version may be available at ocw.mit.edu.

Syllabus

A list of topics by session is available in the calendar below.

Course Meeting Times

Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 1.5 hours / session

Description

This course covers sentential and quantified modal logic, with emphasis on the model theory ("possible worlds semantics"). Topics include soundness, completeness, characterization results for alternative systems, sense and dynamic logics, epistemic logics, as well as logics of necessity and possibility. Course material applies to philosophy, theoretical computer science, and linguistics.

Prerequisites

The prerequisites for this course are 24.241 Logic I or permission of the instructor.

Texts

Buy at Amazon Hughes, G. E., and M. J. Cresswell. A New Introduction to Modal Logic. New York, NY: Routledge, 1996, chapters 1-3 and 6-10. ISBN: 9780415125994.

Buy at Amazon Quine, W. V. "Three Grades of Modal Involvement (1953)." Chapter 15 in The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays. Revised ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976, pp. 158-176. ISBN: 9780674948372.

Grading

ACTIVITIES WEIGHTS
Problem sets 1/3
Final exam 2/3

Calendar

SES # TOPICS KEY DATES
I. Historical and Philosophical Introduction
1-3 Quine's modal logic and Lewis's S1 and S2  
II. Propositional Modal Logic
4-5 The basic semantic framework Problem set 1 due in Ses #5
6 Completeness  
7-9 Techniques for solving problems Problem set 2 due in Ses #9
10-14 Frames and models Problem set 3 due in Ses #13
III. Variations and Applications
15-16 Basic tense logic and combining modality and tense  
17 Epistemic logic Problem set 4 due
IV. Quantified Modal Logic
18 Quantified modal logic and completeness Problem set 5 due
  Final exam