824 research outputs found
Some Thoughts on Hypercomputation
Hypercomputation is a relatively new branch of computer science that emerged
from the idea that the Church--Turing Thesis, which is supposed to describe
what is computable and what is noncomputable, cannot possible be true. Because
of its apparent validity, the Church--Turing Thesis has been used to
investigate the possible limits of intelligence of any imaginable life form,
and, consequently, the limits of information processing, since living beings
are, among others, information processors. However, in the light of
hypercomputation, which seems to be feasibly in our universe, one cannot impose
arbitrary limits to what intelligence can achieve unless there are specific
physical laws that prohibit the realization of something. In addition,
hypercomputation allows us to ponder about aspects of communication between
intelligent beings that have not been considered befor
Stone-Type Dualities for Separation Logics
Stone-type duality theorems, which relate algebraic and
relational/topological models, are important tools in logic because -- in
addition to elegant abstraction -- they strengthen soundness and completeness
to a categorical equivalence, yielding a framework through which both algebraic
and topological methods can be brought to bear on a logic. We give a systematic
treatment of Stone-type duality for the structures that interpret bunched
logics, starting with the weakest systems, recovering the familiar BI and
Boolean BI (BBI), and extending to both classical and intuitionistic Separation
Logic. We demonstrate the uniformity and modularity of this analysis by
additionally capturing the bunched logics obtained by extending BI and BBI with
modalities and multiplicative connectives corresponding to disjunction,
negation and falsum. This includes the logic of separating modalities (LSM), De
Morgan BI (DMBI), Classical BI (CBI), and the sub-classical family of logics
extending Bi-intuitionistic (B)BI (Bi(B)BI). We additionally obtain as
corollaries soundness and completeness theorems for the specific Kripke-style
models of these logics as presented in the literature: for DMBI, the
sub-classical logics extending BiBI and a new bunched logic, Concurrent Kleene
BI (connecting our work to Concurrent Separation Logic), this is the first time
soundness and completeness theorems have been proved. We thus obtain a
comprehensive semantic account of the multiplicative variants of all standard
propositional connectives in the bunched logic setting. This approach
synthesises a variety of techniques from modal, substructural and categorical
logic and contextualizes the "resource semantics" interpretation underpinning
Separation Logic amongst them
Physics, Topology, Logic and Computation: A Rosetta Stone
In physics, Feynman diagrams are used to reason about quantum processes. In
the 1980s, it became clear that underlying these diagrams is a powerful analogy
between quantum physics and topology: namely, a linear operator behaves very
much like a "cobordism". Similar diagrams can be used to reason about logic,
where they represent proofs, and computation, where they represent programs.
With the rise of interest in quantum cryptography and quantum computation, it
became clear that there is extensive network of analogies between physics,
topology, logic and computation. In this expository paper, we make some of
these analogies precise using the concept of "closed symmetric monoidal
category". We assume no prior knowledge of category theory, proof theory or
computer science.Comment: 73 pages, 8 encapsulated postscript figure
Admissibility in Finitely Generated Quasivarieties
Checking the admissibility of quasiequations in a finitely generated (i.e.,
generated by a finite set of finite algebras) quasivariety Q amounts to
checking validity in a suitable finite free algebra of the quasivariety, and is
therefore decidable. However, since free algebras may be large even for small
sets of small algebras and very few generators, this naive method for checking
admissibility in \Q is not computationally feasible. In this paper,
algorithms are introduced that generate a minimal (with respect to a multiset
well-ordering on their cardinalities) finite set of algebras such that the
validity of a quasiequation in this set corresponds to admissibility of the
quasiequation in Q. In particular, structural completeness (validity and
admissibility coincide) and almost structural completeness (validity and
admissibility coincide for quasiequations with unifiable premises) can be
checked. The algorithms are illustrated with a selection of well-known finitely
generated quasivarieties, and adapted to handle also admissibility of rules in
finite-valued logics
Computability and analysis: the legacy of Alan Turing
We discuss the legacy of Alan Turing and his impact on computability and
analysis.Comment: 49 page
Condition/Decision Duality and the Internal Logic of Extensive Restriction Categories
In flowchart languages, predicates play an interesting double role. In the
textual representation, they are often presented as conditions, i.e.,
expressions which are easily combined with other conditions (often via Boolean
combinators) to form new conditions, though they only play a supporting role in
aiding branching statements choose a branch to follow. On the other hand, in
the graphical representation they are typically presented as decisions,
intrinsically capable of directing control flow yet mostly oblivious to Boolean
combination. While categorical treatments of flowchart languages are abundant,
none of them provide a treatment of this dual nature of predicates. In the
present paper, we argue that extensive restriction categories are precisely
categories that capture such a condition/decision duality, by means of
morphisms which, coincidentally, are also called decisions. Further, we show
that having these categorical decisions amounts to having an internal logic:
Analogous to how subobjects of an object in a topos form a Heyting algebra, we
show that decisions on an object in an extensive restriction category form a De
Morgan quasilattice, the algebraic structure associated with the (three-valued)
weak Kleene logic . Full classical propositional logic can be
recovered by restricting to total decisions, yielding extensive categories in
the usual sense, and confirming (from a different direction) a result from
effectus theory that predicates on objects in extensive categories form Boolean
algebras. As an application, since (categorical) decisions are partial
isomorphisms, this approach provides naturally reversible models of classical
propositional logic and weak Kleene logic.Comment: 19 pages, including 6 page appendix of proofs. Accepted for MFPS XXX
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