PVS Embeddings of Propositional and Quantified Modal Logic
This work provides a tool for researchers and practitioners in formal verification to automate modal logic reasoning, but it is incremental as it applies existing methods to a new system.
The authors tackled the problem of embedding propositional and quantified modal logic into the PVS verification system, resulting in an implementation that supports standard syntax and provides effective automation for reasoning about modal axioms and properties.
Modal logics allow reasoning about various modes of truth: for example, what it means for something to be possibly true, or to know that something is true as opposed to merely believing it. This report describes embeddings of propositional and quantified modal logic in the PVS verification system. The resources of PVS allow this to be done in an attractive way that supports much of the standard syntax of modal logic, while providing effective automation. The report introduces and formally specifies and verifies several standard topics in modal logic such as relationships between the standard modal axioms and properties of the accessibility relation, and attributes of the Barcan Formula and its converse in both constant and varying domains.