Complexity Jumps In Multiagent Justification Logic Under Interacting Justifications

Abstract

The Logic of Proofs, LP, and its successor, Justification Logic, is a refinement of the modal logic approach to epistemology in which proofs/justifications are taken into account. In 2000 Kuznets showed that satisfiability for LP is in the second level of the polynomial hierarchy, a result which has been successfully repeated for all other one-agent justification logics whose complexity is known. We introduce a family of multi-agent justification logics with interactions between the agents' justifications, by extending and generalizing the two-agent versions of the Logic of Proofs introduced by Yavorskaya in 2008. Known concepts and tools from the single-agent justification setting are adjusted for this multiple agent case. We present tableau rules and some preliminary complexity results. In several cases the satisfiability problem for these logics remains in the second level of the polynomial hierarchy, while for others it is PSPACE or EXP-hard. Furthermore, this problem becomes PSPACE-hard even for certain two-agent logics, while there are EXP-hard logics of three agents.