Kalmár-style constructive completeness proofs for classical positive propositional calculi

Abstract: We shall settle the completeness of some classical positive propositional calculi (positive propositional calculi in which the so-called Peirce's law holds) by resorting to a close adaptation of Kalmar's completeness proof procedure. First of all, we shall employ this adaptation to establish the completeness of the most familiar axiomatic characterization of the classical logic of material implication and disjunction. Next, we shall demonstrate that the completeness of the so-called classical positive propositional calculus can be proved either through essentially the same adaptation of Kalmar's procedure or as an immediate consequence of the conjunction of our first result and the circumstance of each positive formula being reducible to a syntactically and semantically equivalent one exhibiting a particular normal form. Finally, by defining disjunction in terms of material implication and so mirroring the classical calculus of material implication and disjunction in the classical implicative calculus, the completeness of the latter, as well as the completeness of the classical calculus of material implication and conjunction, will be shown to follow from the completeness of the former in quite simple and direct ways. It is worth noting that all these completeness proofs will be constructive, that is to say, we can easily extract from each of them an effective method for producing formal deductions of all theses of the axiomatic system concerned.