What is "true" in internal realism?

This paper is a critical examination of Putnam's theory of truth as it evolves from metaphysical to internal realism. First, I analyze the model-theoretic argument that led Putnam to abandon the metaphysical concept of truth as correspondence and to adopt and epistemic view of truth. Though a powerful critique of the metaphysical realist conception of truth, this argument does not establish conclusively that the concept of truth has any epistemic content. Secondly, I discuss Putnam's idealization theory of truth, arguing that the identification of truth with "acceptability under ideal conditions" is at odds with the claim that truth is context-transcendent, since the notion of justification is intrinsically context-dependent and no amount of idealization can reedeem its contextual character. Finally, I suggest that the realist intuitions that Putnam's internal realism tries to capture call for no more than a deflationary view of truth. Acceptance of this view requires abandoning not only the idea that truth is an epistemic property, but also the idea that truth is a substantive property that all true statements share and, therefore, a proper object of philosophical theorizing.Aquest article és un examen critic de la teoria de la veritat de Putnam en la seva evolució des d'un realisme metafisic a un realisme intern. En primer lloc, presento una anàlisi de l'argument de la teoria de models que va dur a Putnam a abandonar el concepte metafísic de veritat corn a correspondència i a adoptar un concepte epistèmic de veritat. Aquest argument, encara que constitueix una potent crítica de la concepció de la veritat del realisme metafísic, no estableix conclusivament que la veritar tingui algun contingut epistèmic. En segon lloc, discuteixo la teoria idealitzada de la veritat de Putnam, tot argumentant que la identificació de la veritat amb "acceptabilitat en condicions ideals" no s'adiu amb la tesi que la veritat no és contextual sinó transcendent, per tal com la noció de justificació és intrínsecament contextual i no hi ha idealització que la pugui redimir d'aquest caracter. Finalment, suggereixo que les intuicions realistes que el realisme intern de Putnam intenta captar no requereixen més que una perspectiva deflacionista sobre la veritat. Adoptar aquesta perspectiva implica abandonar no sols la idea que la veritat és una propietat epistèmica, sinó també la idea que la veritat és una propietat substantiva que totes les afirmacions verdaderes comparteixen i que, per tant, és objecte d'una teoria filosòfica

A Formalization of the Theorem of Existence of First-Order Most General Unifiers

This work presents a formalization of the theorem of existence of most general unifiers in first-order signatures in the higher-order proof assistant PVS. The distinguishing feature of this formalization is that it remains close to the textbook proofs that are based on proving the correctness of the well-known Robinson's first-order unification algorithm. The formalization was applied inside a PVS development for term rewriting systems that provides a complete formalization of the Knuth-Bendix Critical Pair theorem, among other relevant theorems of the theory of rewriting. In addition, the formalization methodology has been proved of practical use in order to verify the correctness of unification algorithms in the style of the original Robinson's unification algorithm.Comment: In Proceedings LSFA 2011, arXiv:1203.542

Proving Correctness and Completeness of Normal Programs - a Declarative Approach

We advocate a declarative approach to proving properties of logic programs. Total correctness can be separated into correctness, completeness and clean termination; the latter includes non-floundering. Only clean termination depends on the operational semantics, in particular on the selection rule. We show how to deal with correctness and completeness in a declarative way, treating programs only from the logical point of view. Specifications used in this approach are interpretations (or theories). We point out that specifications for correctness may differ from those for completeness, as usually there are answers which are neither considered erroneous nor required to be computed. We present proof methods for correctness and completeness for definite programs and generalize them to normal programs. For normal programs we use the 3-valued completion semantics; this is a standard semantics corresponding to negation as finite failure. The proof methods employ solely the classical 2-valued logic. We use a 2-valued characterization of the 3-valued completion semantics which may be of separate interest. The presented methods are compared with an approach based on operational semantics. We also employ the ideas of this work to generalize a known method of proving termination of normal programs.Comment: To appear in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP). 44 page

Canonized Rewriting and Ground AC Completion Modulo Shostak Theories : Design and Implementation

AC-completion efficiently handles equality modulo associative and commutative function symbols. When the input is ground, the procedure terminates and provides a decision algorithm for the word problem. In this paper, we present a modular extension of ground AC-completion for deciding formulas in the combination of the theory of equality with user-defined AC symbols, uninterpreted symbols and an arbitrary signature disjoint Shostak theory X. Our algorithm, called AC(X), is obtained by augmenting in a modular way ground AC-completion with the canonizer and solver present for the theory X. This integration rests on canonized rewriting, a new relation reminiscent to normalized rewriting, which integrates canonizers in rewriting steps. AC(X) is proved sound, complete and terminating, and is implemented to extend the core of the Alt-Ergo theorem prover.Comment: 30 pages, full version of the paper TACAS'11 paper "Canonized Rewriting and Ground AC-Completion Modulo Shostak Theories" accepted for publication by LMCS (Logical Methods in Computer Science

A Theory of Formal Synthesis via Inductive Learning

Formal synthesis is the process of generating a program satisfying a high-level formal specification. In recent times, effective formal synthesis methods have been proposed based on the use of inductive learning. We refer to this class of methods that learn programs from examples as formal inductive synthesis. In this paper, we present a theoretical framework for formal inductive synthesis. We discuss how formal inductive synthesis differs from traditional machine learning. We then describe oracle-guided inductive synthesis (OGIS), a framework that captures a family of synthesizers that operate by iteratively querying an oracle. An instance of OGIS that has had much practical impact is counterexample-guided inductive synthesis (CEGIS). We present a theoretical characterization of CEGIS for learning any program that computes a recursive language. In particular, we analyze the relative power of CEGIS variants where the types of counterexamples generated by the oracle varies. We also consider the impact of bounded versus unbounded memory available to the learning algorithm. In the special case where the universe of candidate programs is finite, we relate the speed of convergence to the notion of teaching dimension studied in machine learning theory. Altogether, the results of the paper take a first step towards a theoretical foundation for the emerging field of formal inductive synthesis

Tableaux Modulo Theories Using Superdeduction

We propose a method that allows us to develop tableaux modulo theories using the principles of superdeduction, among which the theory is used to enrich the deduction system with new deduction rules. This method is presented in the framework of the Zenon automated theorem prover, and is applied to the set theory of the B method. This allows us to provide another prover to Atelier B, which can be used to verify B proof rules in particular. We also propose some benchmarks, in which this prover is able to automatically verify a part of the rules coming from the database maintained by Siemens IC-MOL. Finally, we describe another extension of Zenon with superdeduction, which is able to deal with any first order theory, and provide a benchmark coming from the TPTP library, which contains a large set of first order problems.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1501.0117

Informal proof, formal proof, formalism

Increases in the use of automated theorem-provers have renewed focus on the relationship between the informal proofs normally found in mathematical research and fully formalised derivations. Whereas some claim that any correct proof will be underwritten by a fully formal proof, sceptics demur. In this paper I look at the relevance of these issues for formalism, construed as an anti-platonistic metaphysical doctrine. I argue that there are strong reasons to doubt that all proofs are fully formalisable, if formal proofs are required to be finitary, but that, on a proper view of the way in which formal proofs idealise actual practice, this restriction is unjustified and formalism is not threatened

CoLoR: a Coq library on well-founded rewrite relations and its application to the automated verification of termination certificates

Termination is an important property of programs; notably required for programs formulated in proof assistants. It is a very active subject of research in the Turing-complete formalism of term rewriting systems, where many methods and tools have been developed over the years to address this problem. Ensuring reliability of those tools is therefore an important issue. In this paper we present a library formalizing important results of the theory of well-founded (rewrite) relations in the proof assistant Coq. We also present its application to the automated verification of termination certificates, as produced by termination tools

Mixing HOL and Coq in Dedukti (Extended Abstract)

We use Dedukti as a logical framework for interoperability. We use automated tools to translate different developments made in HOL and in Coq to Dedukti, and we combine them to prove new results. We illustrate our approach with a concrete example where we instantiate a sorting algorithm written in Coq with the natural numbers of HOL.Comment: In Proceedings PxTP 2015, arXiv:1507.0837