On Strong Maximality of Paraconsistent Finite-Valued Logics

Maximality is a desirable property of paraconsistent logics, motivated by the aspiration to tolerate inconsistencies, but at the same time retain as much as possible from classical logic. In this paper we introduce a new, strong notion of maximal paraconsistency, which is based on possible extensions of the consequence relation of a logic. We investigate this notion in the framework of finite-valued paraconsistent logics, and show that for every n > 2 there exists an extensive family of n-valued logics, each of which is maximally paraconsistent in our sense, is partial to classical logic, and is not equivalent to any k-valued logic with k <; n. On the other hand, we specify a natural condition that guarantees that a paraconsistent logic is contained in a logic in the class of three-valued paraconsistent logics, and show that all reasonably expressive logics in this class are maximal.