Decidability of Being a Union-splitting

Abstract

Many logical properties are known to be undecidable for normal modal logics, with few exceptions such as consistency and coincidence with $\mathsf{K}$. This paper shows that the property of being a union-splitting in $\mathsf{NExt}\mathsf{K}$, the lattice of normal modal logics, is decidable, thus answering the open problem [WZ07, Problem 2]. This is done by providing a semantic characterization of union-splittings in terms of finite modal algebras. Moreover, by clarifying the connection to union-splittings, we show that in $\mathsf{NExt}\mathsf{K}$, having a decidable axiomatization problem and being a (un)decidable formula are also decidable. The latter answers [CZ97, Problem 17.3] for $\mathsf{NExt}\mathsf{K}$.

14 pages