Abstract

We define the notion of a model of higher-order modal logic in an arbitrary elementary topos E. In contrast to the well-known interpretation of higher-order logic, the type of propositions is not interpreted by the subobject classifier ΩE, but rather by a suitable complete Heyting algebra H. The canonical map relating H and ΩE both serves to interpret equality and provides a modal operator on H in the form of a comonad. Examples of such structures arise from surjective geometric morphisms f : F → E, where H = f∗ΩF. The logic differs from non-modal higher-order logic in that the principles of functional and propositional extensionality are not longer valid but may be replaced by modalized versions. The usual Kripke, neighborhood, and sheaf semantics for propositional and first-order modal logic are subsumed by this notion