Provability as a Modality
Notes from discussion on Section 2.4 Gödel on Provability as a Modality from Goldblatt's paper
Mathematical Modal Logic: A View of Its Evolution
Gödel in his paper An interpretation of the intuitionistic propositional calculus made formal
assertions of provability using the propositional connective B. For example, if some propositional
statement a was provable, we would write Ba. He defined a system of logic by adding the following
three axioms to ordinary propositional calculus.
Bp -> p
Bp -> (Bp -> q) -> Bq)
Bp -> BBp
He also added the inference rule: from a infer Ba. In other words, if a is true then you know that
a is provable. This statement is along the lines of intuitionistic logic. The first and third rules merely
provide a way to add or remove the connective B.