Tableau method of proof for Peirce’s three-valued propositional logic

Abstract

Peirce’s triadic logic has been under discussion since its discovery in the 1960s by Fisch and Turquette. The experiments with matrices of three-valued logic are recorded in a few pages of unpublished manuscripts dated 1909, a decade before similar systems have been developed by logicians. The purposes of Peirce’s work on such logic, as well as semantical aspects of his system, are disputable. In the most extensive work about it, Turquette suggested that the matrices are related in dual pairs of axiomatic Hilbert-style systems. In this paper, we present a simple tableau proof for a fragment of Peirce three-valued logic, called P3, based on similar approaches in many-valued literature. We demonstrated that this proof is sound and complete. Besides that, taking the false as the only undesignated value and adding non-classical negations to the calculus, we can explore paraconsistent and paracompleteness theories into P3.

Keywords: Charles S. Peirce, many-valued logics, theory of proof, tableau method.