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On dialogue games and coherent strategies

We explain how to see the set of positions of a dialogue game as a coherence space in the sense of Girard or as a bistructure in the sense of Curien, Plotkin and Winskel. The coherence structure on the set of positions results from a Kripke translation of tensorial logic into linear logic extended with a necessity modality. The translation is done in such a way that every innocent strategy defines a clique or a configuration in the resulting space of positions. This leads us to study the notion of configuration designed by Curien, Plotkin and Winskel for general bistructures in the particular case of a bistructure associated to a dialogue game. We show that every such configuration may be seen as an interactive strategy equipped with a backward as well as a forward dynamics based on the interplay between the stable order and the extensional order. In that way, the category of bistructures is shown to include a full subcategory of games and coherent strategies of an interesting nature

Bistructures, Bidomains and Linear Logic

Bistructures are a generalisation of event structures which allow a representation of spaces of functions at higher types in an order-extensional setting. The partial order of causal dependency is replaced by two orders, one associated with input and the other with output in the behaviour of functions. Bistructures form a categorical model of Girard’s classical linear logic in which the involution of linear logic is modelled, roughly speaking, by a reversal of the roles of input and output. The comonad of the model has an associated co-Kleisli category which is closely related to that of Berry’s bidomains (both have equivalent non-trivial full sub-cartesian closed categories)

An Action Semantics for ML Concurrency Primitives

This paper is about the recently-developed framework of action semantics. The pragmatic qualities of action semantic descriptions are particularly good, which encourages their use in industrial-scale applications where semantic descriptions are needed, e.g., compiler development. The paper has two main aims: to demonstrate the remarkable extensibility of action semantic descriptions, and to illustrate the action semantics treatment of concurrency. These aims are achieved simultaneously, by first giving the description of a sequential (ML-like) programming language fragment, and then extending the described language with some concurrency primitives (taken from CML). The action semantic description of the sequential part of the language does not change at all when the concurrency primitives are added, it merely gets augmented by the description of the new features

LCF Examples in HOL

The LCF system provides a logic of fixed point theory and is useful to reason about non-termination, arbitrary recursive definitions and infinite types as lazy lists. It is unsuitable for reasoning about finite types and strict functions. The HOL system provides set theory and supports reasoning about finite types and total functions well. In this paper a number of examples are used to demonstrate that an extension of HOL with domain theory combines the benefits of both systems. The examples illustrate reasoning about infinite values and non-terminating functions and show how mixing domain and set theoretic reasoning eases reasoning about finite LCF types and strict functions. An example presents a proof of the correctness and termination of a recursive unification algorithm using well-founded induction

Finitisation in Bounded Arithmetic

I prove various results concerning un-decidability in weak fragments of Arithmetic. All results are concerned with S^{1}_{2} \subseteq T^{1}_{2} \subseteq S^{2}_{2} \subseteq T^{2}_{2} \subseteq.... a hierarchy of theories which have already been intensively studied in the literature. Ideally one would like to separate these systems. However this is generally expected to be a very deep problem, closely related to some of the most famous and open problems in complexity theory. In order to throw some light on the separation problems, I consider the case where the underlying language is enriched by extra relation and function symbols. The paper introduces a new type of results. These state that the first three levels in the hierarchy (i.e. S^{1}_{2}, T^{1}_{2} and S^{2}_{2}) are never able to distinguish (in a precise sense) the "finite'' from the "infinite''. The fourth level (i.e. T^{2}_{2}) in some cases can make such a distinction. More precisely, elementary principles from finitistical combinatorics (when expressed solely by the extra relation and function symbols) are only provable on the first three levels if they are valid when considered as principles of general (infinitistical) combinatorics. I show that this does not hold for the fourth level. All results are proved by forcing

Introduction to linear logic and ludics, part II

This paper is the second part of an introduction to linear logic and ludics, both due to Girard. It is devoted to proof nets, in the limited, yet central, framework of multiplicative linear logic and to ludics, which has been recently developped in an aim of further unveiling the fundamental interactive nature of computation and logic. We hope to offer a few computer science insights into this new theory