Abstract

It is well-known that intuitionistic logics can be formalized by means of Heyting algebras, i.e. relatively pseudocomplemented semilattices. Within such algebras the logical connectives implication and conjunction are formalized as the relative pseudocomplement and the semilattice operation meet, respectively. If the Heyting algebra has a bottom element |$0$|⁠, then the relative pseudocomplement with respect to |$0$| is called the pseudocomplement and it is considered as the connective negation in this logic. Our idea is to consider an arbitrary meet-semilattice with |$0$| satisfying only the Ascending Chain Condition (these assumptions are trivially satisfied in finite meet-semilattices) and introduce the operators formalizing the connectives negation |$x^{0}$| and implication |$x\rightarrow y$| as the set of all maximal elements |$z$| satisfying |$x\wedge z=0$| and as the set of all maximal elements |$z$| satisfying |$x\wedge z\leq y$|⁠, respectively. Such a negation and implication is ‘unsharp’ since it assigns to one entry |$x$| or to two entries |$x$| and |$y$| belonging to the semilattice, respectively, a subset instead of an element of the semilattice. Surprisingly, this kind of negation and implication still shares a number of properties of these connectives in intuitionistic logic, in particular the derivation rule Modus Ponens. Moreover, unsharp negation and unsharp implication can be characterized by means of five, respectively seven simple axioms. We present several examples. The concepts of a deductive system and of a filter are introduced as well as the congruence determined by such a filter. We finally describe certain relationships between these concepts.