6,505 research outputs found
Canonical Proof nets for Classical Logic
Proof nets provide abstract counterparts to sequent proofs modulo rule
permutations; the idea being that if two proofs have the same underlying
proof-net, they are in essence the same proof. Providing a convincing proof-net
counterpart to proofs in the classical sequent calculus is thus an important
step in understanding classical sequent calculus proofs. By convincing, we mean
that (a) there should be a canonical function from sequent proofs to proof
nets, (b) it should be possible to check the correctness of a net in polynomial
time, (c) every correct net should be obtainable from a sequent calculus proof,
and (d) there should be a cut-elimination procedure which preserves
correctness. Previous attempts to give proof-net-like objects for propositional
classical logic have failed at least one of the above conditions. In [23], the
author presented a calculus of proof nets (expansion nets) satisfying (a) and
(b); the paper defined a sequent calculus corresponding to expansion nets but
gave no explicit demonstration of (c). That sequent calculus, called LK\ast in
this paper, is a novel one-sided sequent calculus with both additively and
multiplicatively formulated disjunction rules. In this paper (a self-contained
extended version of [23]), we give a full proof of (c) for expansion nets with
respect to LK\ast, and in addition give a cut-elimination procedure internal to
expansion nets - this makes expansion nets the first notion of proof-net for
classical logic satisfying all four criteria.Comment: Accepted for publication in APAL (Special issue, Classical Logic and
Computation
Graphical representation of canonical proof: two case studies
An interesting problem in proof theory is to find representations of proof that do
not distinguish between proofs that are ‘morally’ the same. For many logics, the presentation
of proofs in a traditional formalism, such as Gentzen’s sequent calculus, introduces
artificial syntactic structure called ‘bureaucracy’; e.g., an arbitrary ordering
of freely permutable inferences. A proof system that is free of bureaucracy is called
canonical for a logic. In this dissertation two canonical proof systems are presented,
for two logics: a notion of proof nets for additive linear logic with units, and ‘classical
proof forests’, a graphical formalism for first-order classical logic.
Additive linear logic (or sum–product logic) is the fragment of linear logic consisting
of linear implication between formulae constructed only from atomic formulae and
the additive connectives and units. Up to an equational theory over proofs, the logic
describes categories in which finite products and coproducts occur freely. A notion of
proof nets for additive linear logic is presented, providing canonical graphical representations
of the categorical morphisms and constituting a tractable decision procedure
for this equational theory. From existing proof nets for additive linear logic without
units by Hughes and Van Glabbeek (modified to include the units naively), canonical
proof nets are obtained by a simple graph rewriting algorithm called saturation. Main
technical contributions are the substantial correctness proof of the saturation algorithm,
and a correctness criterion for saturated nets.
Classical proof forests are a canonical, graphical proof formalism for first-order
classical logic. Related to Herbrand’s Theorem and backtracking games in the style
of Coquand, the forests assign witnessing information to quantifiers in a structurally
minimal way, reducing a first-order sentence to a decidable propositional one. A similar
formalism ‘expansion tree proofs’ was presented by Miller, but not given a method
of composition. The present treatment adds a notion of cut, and investigates the possibility
of composing forests via cut-elimination. Cut-reduction steps take the form
of a rewrite relation that arises from the structure of the forests in a natural way.
Yet reductions are intricate, and initially not well-behaved: from perfectly ordinary
cuts, reduction may reach unnaturally configured cuts that may not be reduced. Cutelimination
is shown using a modified version of the rewrite relation, inspired by the
game-theoretic interpretation of the forests, for which weak normalisation is shown,
and strong normalisation is conjectured. In addition, by a more intricate argument,
weak normalisation is also shown for the original reduction relation
A Systematic Approach to Canonicity in the Classical Sequent Calculus
International audienceThe sequent calculus is often criticized for requiring proofs to contain large amounts of low-level syntactic details that can obscure the essence of a given proof. Because each inference rule introduces only a single connective, sequent proofs can separate closely related steps---such as instantiating a block of quantifiers---by irrelevant noise. Moreover, the sequential nature of sequent proofs forces proof steps that are syntactically non-interfering and permutable to nevertheless be written in some arbitrary order. The sequent calculus thus lacks a notion of canonicity: proofs that should be considered essentially the same may not have a common syntactic form. To fix this problem, many researchers have proposed replacing the sequent calculus with proof structures that are more parallel or geometric. Proof-nets, matings, and atomic flows are examples of such revolutionary formalisms. We propose, instead, an evolutionary approach to recover canonicity within the sequent calculus, which we illustrate for classical first-order logic. The essential element of our approach is the use of a multi-focused sequent calculus as the means of abstracting away the details from classical cut-free sequent proofs. We show that, among the multi-focused proofs, the maximally multi-focused proofs that make the foci as parallel as possible are canonical. Moreover, such proofs are isomorphic to expansion proofs---a well known, minimalistic, and parallel generalization of Herbrand disjunctions---for classical first-order logic. This technique is a systematic way to recover the desired essence of any sequent proof without abandoning the sequent calculus
Multiplicative-Additive Proof Equivalence is Logspace-complete, via Binary Decision Trees
Given a logic presented in a sequent calculus, a natural question is that of
equivalence of proofs: to determine whether two given proofs are equated by any
denotational semantics, ie any categorical interpretation of the logic
compatible with its cut-elimination procedure. This notion can usually be
captured syntactically by a set of rule permutations.
Very generally, proofnets can be defined as combinatorial objects which
provide canonical representatives of equivalence classes of proofs. In
particular, the existence of proof nets for a logic provides a solution to the
equivalence problem of this logic. In certain fragments of linear logic, it is
possible to give a notion of proofnet with good computational properties,
making it a suitable representation of proofs for studying the cut-elimination
procedure, among other things.
It has recently been proved that there cannot be such a notion of proofnets
for the multiplicative (with units) fragment of linear logic, due to the
equivalence problem for this logic being Pspace-complete.
We investigate the multiplicative-additive (without unit) fragment of linear
logic and show it is closely related to binary decision trees: we build a
representation of proofs based on binary decision trees, reducing proof
equivalence to decision tree equivalence, and give a converse encoding of
binary decision trees as proofs. We get as our main result that the complexity
of the proof equivalence problem of the studied fragment is Logspace-complete.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1502.0199
Proof equivalence in MLL is PSPACE-complete
MLL proof equivalence is the problem of deciding whether two proofs in
multiplicative linear logic are related by a series of inference permutations.
It is also known as the word problem for star-autonomous categories. Previous
work has shown the problem to be equivalent to a rewiring problem on proof
nets, which are not canonical for full MLL due to the presence of the two
units. Drawing from recent work on reconfiguration problems, in this paper it
is shown that MLL proof equivalence is PSPACE-complete, using a reduction from
Nondeterministic Constraint Logic. An important consequence of the result is
that the existence of a satisfactory notion of proof nets for MLL with units is
ruled out (under current complexity assumptions). The PSPACE-hardness result
extends to equivalence of normal forms in MELL without units, where the
weakening rule for the exponentials induces a similar rewiring problem.Comment: Journal version of: Willem Heijltjes and Robin Houston. No proof nets
for MLL with units: Proof equivalence in MLL is PSPACE-complete. In Proc.
Joint Meeting of the 23rd EACSL Annual Conference on Computer Science Logic
and the 29th Annual ACM/IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science, 201
Session Types in Abelian Logic
There was a PhD student who says "I found a pair of wooden shoes. I put a
coin in the left and a key in the right. Next morning, I found those objects in
the opposite shoes." We do not claim existence of such shoes, but propose a
similar programming abstraction in the context of typed lambda calculi. The
result, which we call the Amida calculus, extends Abramsky's linear lambda
calculus LF and characterizes Abelian logic.Comment: In Proceedings PLACES 2013, arXiv:1312.221
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