Paper detail

Decidability of the satisfiability problem for Boolean set theory with the unordered Cartesian product operator

The satisfiability problem for multilevel syllogistic extended with the Cartesian product operator (MLSC) is a long-standing open problem in computable set theory. For long, it was not excluded that such a problem were undecidable, due to its remarkable resemblance with the well-celebrated Hilbert's tenth problem, as it was deemed reasonable that union of disjoint sets and Cartesian product might somehow play the roles of integer addition and multiplication. To dispense with nonessential technical difficulties, we report here about a positive solution to the satisfiability problem for a slight simplified variant of MLSC, yet fully representative of the combinatorial complications due to the presence of the Cartesian product, in which membership is not present and the Cartesian product operator is replaced with its unordered variant. We are very confident that such decidability result can be generalized to full MLSC, though at the cost of considerable technicalities.