In logic, temporal logic is any system of rules and symbolism for representing, and reasoning about, propositions qualified in terms of time (for example, "I am always hungry", "I will eventually be hungry", or "I will be hungry until I eat something"). It is sometimes also used to refer to tense logic, a modal logic-based system of temporal logic introduced by Arthur Prior in the late 1950s, with important contributions by Hans Kamp. It has been further developed by computer scientists, notably Amir Pnueli, and .
Temporal logic has found an important application in formal verification, where it is used to state requirements of hardware or software systems. For instance, one may wish to say that whenever a request is made, access to a resource is eventually granted, but it is never granted to two requestors simultaneously. Such a statement can conveniently be expressed in a temporal logic.
Temporal logic always has the ability to reason about a timeline. So-called "linear-time" logics are restricted to this type of reasoning. Branching-time logics, however, can reason about multiple timelines. This permits in particular treatment of environments that may act unpredictably. To continue the example, in a branching-time logic we may state that "there is a possibility that I will stay hungry forever", and that "there is a possibility that eventually I am no longer hungry". If we do not know whether or not I will ever be fed, these statements can both be true.
There was little development for millennia, Charles Sanders Peirce noted in the 19th century:Vardi 2008, p. 154
Surprisingly for Peirce, the first system of temporal logic was constructed, as far as we know, in the first half of 20th century. Although Arthur Prior is widely known as a founder of temporal logic, the first formalization of such logic was provided in 1947 by Polish logician, Jerzy Łoś. In his work Podstawy Analizy Metodologicznej Kanonów Milla ( The Foundations of a Methodological Analysis of Mill’s Methods) he presented a formalization of Mill's canons. In Łoś' approach, emphasis was placed on the time factor. Thus, to reach his goal, he had to create a logic that could provide means for formalization of temporal functions. The logic could be seen as a byproduct of Łoś' main aim, albeit it was the first positional logic that, as a framework, was used later for Łoś' inventions in epistemic logic. The logic itself has syntax very different than Prior's tense logic, which uses modal operators. The language of Łoś' logic rather uses a realization operator, specific to positional logic, which binds the expression with the specific context in which its truth-value is considered. In Łoś' work this considered context was only temporal, thus expressions were bound with specific moments or intervals of time.
In the following years, research of temporal logic by Arthur Prior began. He was concerned with the philosophical implications of free will and predestination. According to his wife, he first considered formalizing temporal logic in 1953. Results of his research were first presented at the conference in Wellington in 1954. The system Prior presented, was similar syntactically to Łoś' logic, although not until 1955 did he explicitly refer to Łoś' work, in the last section of Appendix 1 in Prior’s Formal Logic.
Arthur Prior gave lectures on the topic at the University of Oxford in 1955–6, and in 1957 published a book, Time and Modality, in which he introduced a propositional modal logic with two temporal connectives (), F and P, corresponding to "sometime in the future" and "sometime in the past". In this early work, Prior considered time to be linear. In 1958 however, he received a letter from Saul Kripke, who pointed out that this assumption is perhaps unwarranted. In a development that foreshadowed a similar one in computer science, Prior took this under advisement, and developed two theories of branching time, which he called "Ockhamist" and "Peircean". Between 1958 and 1965 Prior also corresponded with Charles Leonard Hamblin, and a number of early developments in the field can be traced to this correspondence, for example Hamblin implications. Prior published his most mature work on the topic, the book Past, Present, and Future in 1967. He died two years later.
Along with tense logic, Arthur Prior constructed a few systems of positional logic, which inherited their main ideas from Łoś. Work in positional temporal logics was continued by Nicholas Rescher in the 60s and 70s. In such works as Note on Chronological Logic (1966), On the Logic of Chronological Propositions (1968) , Topological Logic (1968), and Temporal Logic (1971) he researched connections between Łoś' and Arthur Prior's systems. Moreover, he proved that Arthur Prior's tense operators could be defined using a realization operator in specific positional logics. Nicholas Rescher, in his work, also created more general systems of positional logics. Although the first ones were constructed for purely temporal uses, he proposed the term topological logics for logics that were meant to contain a realization operator but had no specific temporal axioms—like the clock axiom.
The binary temporal operators Since and Until were introduced by Hans Kamp in his 1968 Ph.D. thesis, which also contains an important result relating temporal logic to first-order logic—a result now known as Kamp's theorem.Vardi 2008, p. 154
Two early contenders in formal verifications were linear temporal logic, a linear-time logic by Amir Pnueli, and computation tree logic (CTL), a branching-time logic by Mordechai Ben-Ari, Zohar Manna and Amir Pnueli. An almost equivalent formalism to CTL was suggested around the same time by E. M. Clarke and E. A. Emerson. The fact that the second logic can be Decision problem more efficiently than the first does not reflect on branching- and linear-time logics in general, as has sometimes been argued. Rather, Emerson and Lei show that any linear-time logic can be extended to a branching-time logic that can be decided with the same complexity.
The set of terms (denoted by S) is constructed as follows:
The set of formulas (denoted by For) is constructed as follows:
These can be combined if we let π be an infinite path:
From P and F one can define G and H, and vice versa:
F &\equiv \lnot G\lnot \\ P &\equiv \lnot H\lnot\end{align}
where a is some atomic formula.
are used to evaluate the truth of sentences in TL. A pair (, <) of a set and a binary relation < on (called "precedence") is called a frame. A model is given by triple (, <, ) of a frame and a function called a valuation that assigns to each pair (, ) of an atomic formula and a time value some truth value. The notion " is true in a model =(, <, ) at time " is abbreviated Double turnstile. With this notation,
+ ! Statement ! ... is true just when | |
⊨ | (,)=true |
⊨¬ | not ⊨ |
⊨(∧) | ⊨ and ⊨ |
⊨(∨) | ⊨ or ⊨ |
⊨(→) | ⊨ if ⊨ |
⊨G | ⊨ for all with < |
⊨H | ⊨ for all with < |
Given a class of frames, a sentence of TL is
Many sentences are only valid for a limited class of frames. It is common to restrict the class of frames to those with a relation < that is transitive, antisymmetric, reflexive, trichotomic, irreflexive, Total order, Dense order, or some combination of these.
One can derive the following rules:
& M(a) &&= a^*x_0 \\ & M(\lnot \phi) &&= \lnot M(\phi) \\ & M(\phi\land\psi) &&= M(\phi)\land M(\psi) \\ & M(\mathsf{G}\phi) &&= \forall x_1 (x_0\end{align} where is the sentence with all variable indices incremented by 1 and is a one-place predicate defined by .
Temporal operatorsTemporal logic has two kinds of operators: and modal operators. Logical operators are usual truth-functional operators (). The modal operators used in linear temporal logic and computation tree logic are defined as follows.
U Until: holds at the current or a future position, and has to hold until that position. At that position does not have to hold any more. ImageSize = width:240 height:94 PlotArea = left:30 bottom:30 top:0 right:20 DateFormat = x.y Period = from:0 till:6 TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal AlignBars = justify ScaleMajor = gridcolor:black increment:1 start:0 ScaleMinor = gridcolor:black increment:1 start:0 PlotData=
bar:p color:red width:10 align:left fontsize:S from:1 till:3
bar:q color:red width:10 align:left fontsize:S from:3 till:5
bar:pUq color:red width:10 align:left fontsize:S from:1 till:5R Release: releases if is true up until and including the first position in which is true (or forever if such a position does not exist). ImageSize = width:240 height:100 PlotArea = left:30 bottom:30 top:0 right:20 DateFormat = x.y Period = from:0 till:8 TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal AlignBars = justify ScaleMajor = gridcolor:black increment:1 start:0 ScaleMinor = gridcolor:black increment:1 start:0 PlotData=
bar:p color:red width:10 align:left fontsize:S from:2 till:4 from:6 till:8
bar:q color:red width:10 align:left fontsize:S from:1 till:3 from:5 till:6 from:7 till:8
bar:pRq color:red width:10 align:left fontsize:S from:1 till:3 from:7 till:8N Next: has to hold at the next state. ( X is used synonymously.) ImageSize = width:240 height:60 PlotArea = left:30 bottom:30 top:0 right:20 DateFormat = x.y Period = from:0 till:6 TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal AlignBars = justify ScaleMajor = gridcolor:black increment:1 start:0 ScaleMinor = gridcolor:black increment:1 start:0 PlotData=
bar:p color:red width:10 align:left fontsize:S from:2 till:3 from:5 till:6
bar:Np color:red width:10 align:left fontsize:S from:1 till:2 from:4 till:5F Future: eventually has to hold (somewhere on the subsequent path). ImageSize = width:240 height:60 PlotArea = left:30 bottom:30 top:0 right:20 DateFormat = x.y Period = from:0 till:6 TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal AlignBars = justify ScaleMajor = gridcolor:black increment:1 start:0 ScaleMinor = gridcolor:black increment:1 start:0 PlotData=
bar:p color:red width:10 align:left fontsize:S from:2 till:3 from:4 till:5
bar:Fp color:red width:10 align:left fontsize:S from:0 till:5G Globally: has to hold on the entire subsequent path. ImageSize = width:240 height:60 PlotArea = left:30 bottom:30 top:0 right:20 DateFormat = x.y Period = from:0 till:6 TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal AlignBars = justify ScaleMajor = gridcolor:black increment:1 start:0 ScaleMinor = gridcolor:black increment:1 start:0 PlotData=
bar:p color:red width:10 align:left fontsize:S from:1 till:3 from:4 till:6
bar:Gp color:red width:10 align:left fontsize:S from:4 till:6A All: has to hold on all paths starting from the current state. E Exists: there exists at least one path starting from the current state where holds. Alternate symbols:
- operator R is sometimes denoted by V
- The operator W is the weak until operator: is equivalent to
Unary operators are well-formed formulas whenever is well-formed. Binary operators are well-formed formulas whenever and are well-formed.
In some logics, some operators cannot be expressed. For example, N operator cannot be expressed in temporal logic of actions.
Temporal logicsTemporal logics include:
A variation, closely related to temporal or chronological or tense logics, are modal logics based upon "topology", "place", or "spatial position".
- Some systems of positional logic
- Linear temporal logic (LTL) temporal logic without branching timelines
- Computation tree logic (CTL) temporal logic with branching timelines
- Interval temporal logic (ITL)
- Temporal logic of actions (TLA)
- Signal temporal logic (STL)
- Timestamp temporal logic (TTL)
- Property specification language (PSL)
- CTL*, which generalizes LTL and CTL
- Hennessy–Milner logic (HML)
- Modal μ-calculus, which includes as a subset HML and CTL*
- Metric temporal logic (MTL)Koymans, R. (1990). "Specifying real-time properties with metric temporal logic", Real-Time Systems 2(4): 255–299. .
- Metric interval temporal logic (MITL)Maler, O.; Nickovic, D. (2004). "Monitoring temporal properties of continuous signals". .
- Timed propositional temporal logic (TPTL)
- Truncated Linear Temporal Logic (TLTL)Li, Xiao, Cristian-Ioan Vasile, and Calin Belta. "Reinforcement learning with temporal logic rewards."
- Hyper temporal logic (HyperLTL)
(2025). 9783642547911 ISBN 9783642547911(1968). 9789048183319 ISBN 9789048183319(1979). 9789400994096 ISBN 9789400994096
See also
- HPO formalism
- Kripke structure
- Automata theory
- Chomsky grammar
- State transition system
- Duration calculus (DC)
- Hybrid logic
- Modal logic
- Temporal logic in finite-state verification
- Reo Coordination Language
Notes
- Mordechai Ben-Ari, Zohar Manna, Amir Pnueli: The Temporal Logic of Branching Time. POPL 1981: 164–176
- Amir Pnueli: The Temporal Logic of Programs FOCS 1977: 46–57
- Venema, Yde, 2001, "Temporal Logic," in Goble, Lou, ed., The Blackwell Guide to Philosophical Logic. Blackwell.
- E. A. Emerson and Chin-Laung Lei, " Modalities for model checking: branching time logic strikes back", in Science of Computer Programming 8, pp. 275–306, 1987.
- E. A. Emerson, " Temporal and modal logic", Handbook of Theoretical Computer Science, Chapter 16, the MIT Press, 1990
- A Practical Introduction to PSL, Cindy Eisner, Dana Fisman
- preprint. Historical perspective on how seemingly disparate ideas came together in computer science and engineering. (The mention of Church in the title of this paper is a reference to a little-known 1957 paper, in which Church proposed a way to perform hardware verification.)
Further reading
(1995). 9780792335863, Springer. ISBN 9780792335863
External links
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: " Temporal Logic"—by Anthony Galton.
- Temporal Logic by Yde Venema, formal description of syntax and semantics, questions of axiomatization. Treating also Kamp's dyadic temporal operators (since, until)
- Notes on games in temporal logic by Ian Hodkinson, including a formal description of first-order temporal logic
- CADP – provides generic model checkers for various temporal logic
- PAT is a powerful free model checker, LTL checker, simulator and refinement checker for CSP and its extensions (with shared variable, arrays, wide range of fairness).
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