On Dependence Logic

The goal of dependence logic is to establish a basic theory of dependence and independence underlying such seemingly unrelated subjects as causality, random variables, bound variables in logic, database theory, the theory of social choice, and even quantum physics. There is an avalanche of new results in this field demonstrating remarkable convergence. The concepts of (in)dependence in the different fields of humanities and sciences have surprisingly much in common and a common logic is starting to emerge. Dependence logic [23] arose from the compositional semantics of Wilfrid Hodges [14] for the independence friendly logic [13, 19]. In dependence logic the basic semantic concept is not that of an assignment s satisfying a formula φ in