Semantics
The semantics of second-order logic establish the meaning of each sentence. Unlike first-order logic, which has only one standard semantics, there are two different semantics that are commonly used for second-order logic: standard semantics and Henkin semantics. In each of these semantics, the interpretations of the first-order quantifiers and the logical connectives are the same as in first-order logic. Only the ranges of quantifiers over second-order variables differ in the two types of semantics (Väänänen 2001).
In standard semantics, also called full semantics, the quantifiers range over all sets or functions of the appropriate sort. Thus once the domain of the first-order variables is established, the meaning of the remaining quantifiers is fixed. It is these semantics that give second-order logic its expressive power, and they will be assumed for the remainder of this article.
In Henkin semantics, each sort of second-order variable has a particular domain of its own to range over, which may be a proper subset of all sets or functions of that sort. Leon Henkin (1950) defined these semantics and proved that Gödel's completeness theorem and compactness theorem, which hold for first-order logic, carry over to second-order logic with Henkin semantics. This is because Henkin semantics are almost identical to many-sorted first-order semantics, where additional sorts of variables are added to simulate the new variables of second-order logic. Second-order logic with Henkin semantics is not more expressive than first-order logic. Henkin semantics are commonly used in the study of second-order arithmetic.
Väänänen (2001) argued that the choice between Henkin models and full models for second-order logic is analogous to the choice between ZFC and V as a basis for set theory: "As with second-order logic, we cannot really choose whether we axiomatize mathematics using V or ZFC. The result is the same in both cases, as ZFC is the best attempt so far to use V as an axiomatization of mathematics."
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