First-Order Resolution Methods for Modal Logics⋆ R. A. Schmidt1 and U. Hustadt2 1 The University of Manchester, UK,
[email protected] 2 University of Liverpool, UK,
[email protected] Abstract. In this paper we give an overview of results for modal logic which can be shown using techniques and methods from first-order logic and resolution. Because of the breadth of the area and the many appli- cations we focus on the use of first-order resolution methods for modal logics. In addition to traditional propositional modal logics we consider more expressive PDL-like dynamic modal logics which are closely related to description logics. Without going into too much detail, we survey dif- ferent ways of translating modal logics into first-order logic, we explore different ways of using first-order resolution theorem provers, and we discuss a variety of results which have been obtained in the setting of first-order resolution. 1 Introduction The main motivation for reducing problems in one logic (the source logic) to ‘equivalent’ problems in another logic (the target logic) is to exploit results of the target logic to draw some conclusions about the initial problems and use existing methods and tools of the target logic for the purpose of solving prob- lems in the source logic. Reduction of modal logic problems to first-order logic is the pertinent case considered in this paper. There are good reasons for following this approach. First, a plethora of results on first-order logic and subclasses of it are available, including (un)decidability results, complexity results, correctness results for a wide range of calculi for first-order logic, and results on practical aspects and optimisation of the implementation of these calculi.