Monadic Second-Order Logic in HOL: Deep and Shallow with Automated Faithfulness (Extended Preprint)

The paper presents three Isabelle/HOL embeddings of monadic second‑order logic (MSO): a deep embedding, a maximal‑shallow embedding, and a minimal‑shallow embedding that collapses formulas to bool. It introduces a two‑sorted substitution system that ensures capture‑avoiding substitution and proves the faithfulness of all embeddings. A fully mechanised two‑sorted downward Löwenheim‑Skolem theorem is established, showing that the minimal embedding recovers deep validity relative to countable assignments and aligns with both the general (Henkin‑style) and standard readings of MSO, while also demonstrating differences in classical MSO properties across the embeddings.

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