Rational Lawvere Logic

We study Rational Lawvere logic RL. This logic is defined over the extended positive reals with an algebraic structure combining the Lawvere quantale (with the reversed order on the extended reals and a sum as tensor) and a multiplicative quantale (with the usual order on the extended reals and a multiplication as tensor); together they provide a semiring structure. The logic is designed for complex quantitative reasoning, including sequents expressing inequalities between rational functions over the extended positive reals. We give a deduction system and demonstrate its expressiveness by deriving a classical result from probability theory relating the Kantorovich and total variation distances. Our deductive system is complete for finitely axiomatizable theories. The proof of completeness relies on the Krivine-Stengle Positivstellensatz.

We additionally provide complexity results for both RL and its affine fragment AL. We consider two decision problems: the satisfiability of a set of sequents and whether a sequent follows from a finite set of sequent. We show that both problems lie in PSPACE for RL, and we give sharper complexity bounds for AL: the first problem is NP-complete, while the second is co-NP-complete.