Streamlining Input/Output Logics with Sequent Calculi

Abstract

Input/Output (I/O) logic is a general framework for reasoning about conditional norms and/or causal relations. We streamline Bochman’s causal I/O logics via proof-search-oriented sequent calculi. Our calculi establish a natural syntactic link between the derivability in these logics and in the original I/O logics. As a consequence of our results, we obtain new, simple semantics for all these logics, complexity bounds, embeddings into normal modal logics, and efficient deduction methods. Our work encompasses many scattered results and provides uniform solutions to various unresolved problems.