An interactive semantics of logic programming

We apply to logic programming some recently emerging ideas from the field of reduction-based communicating systems, with the aim of giving evidence of the hidden interactions and the coordination mechanisms that rule the operational machinery of such a programming paradigm. The semantic framework we have chosen for presenting our results is tile logic, which has the advantage of allowing a uniform treatment of goals and observations and of applying abstract categorical tools for proving the results. As main contributions, we mention the finitary presentation of abstract unification, and a concurrent and coordinated abstract semantics consistent with the most common semantics of logic programming. Moreover, the compositionality of the tile semantics is guaranteed by standard results, as it reduces to check that the tile systems associated to logic programs enjoy the tile decomposition property. An extension of the approach for handling constraint systems is also discussed.Comment: 42 pages, 24 figure, 3 tables, to appear in the CUP journal of Theory and Practice of Logic Programmin

A Categorical View on Algebraic Lattices in Formal Concept Analysis

Formal concept analysis has grown from a new branch of the mathematical field of lattice theory to a widely recognized tool in Computer Science and elsewhere. In order to fully benefit from this theory, we believe that it can be enriched with notions such as approximation by computation or representability. The latter are commonly studied in denotational semantics and domain theory and captured most prominently by the notion of algebraicity, e.g. of lattices. In this paper, we explore the notion of algebraicity in formal concept analysis from a category-theoretical perspective. To this end, we build on the the notion of approximable concept with a suitable category and show that the latter is equivalent to the category of algebraic lattices. At the same time, the paper provides a relatively comprehensive account of the representation theory of algebraic lattices in the framework of Stone duality, relating well-known structures such as Scott information systems with further formalisms from logic, topology, domains and lattice theory.Comment: 36 page

Commutativity

We describe a general framework for notions of commutativity based on enriched category theory. We extend Eilenberg and Kelly's tensor product for categories enriched over a symmetric monoidal base to a tensor product for categories enriched over a normal duoidal category; using this, we re-find notions such as the commutativity of a finitary algebraic theory or a strong monad, the commuting tensor product of two theories, and the Boardman-Vogt tensor product of symmetric operads.Comment: 48 pages; final journal versio

Data types with symmetries and polynomial functors over groupoids

Polynomial functors are useful in the theory of data types, where they are often called containers. They are also useful in algebra, combinatorics, topology, and higher category theory, and in this broader perspective the polynomial aspect is often prominent and justifies the terminology. For example, Tambara's theorem states that the category of finite polynomial functors is the Lawvere theory for commutative semirings. In this talk I will explain how an upgrade of the theory from sets to groupoids is useful to deal with data types with symmetries, and provides a common generalisation of and a clean unifying framework for quotient containers (cf. Abbott et al.), species and analytic functors (Joyal 1985), as well as the stuff types of Baez-Dolan. The multi-variate setting also includes relations and spans, multispans, and stuff operators. An attractive feature of this theory is that with the correct homotopical approach - homotopy slices, homotopy pullbacks, homotopy colimits, etc. - the groupoid case looks exactly like the set case. After some standard examples, I will illustrate the notion of data-types-with-symmetries with examples from quantum field theory, where the symmetries of complicated tree structures of graphs play a crucial role, and can be handled elegantly using polynomial functors over groupoids. (These examples, although beyond species, are purely combinatorial and can be appreciated without background in quantum field theory.) Locally cartesian closed 2-categories provide semantics for 2-truncated intensional type theory. For a fullfledged type theory, locally cartesian closed \infty-categories seem to be needed. The theory of these is being developed by D.Gepner and the author as a setting for homotopical species, and several of the results exposed in this talk are just truncations of \infty-results obtained in joint work with Gepner. Details will appear elsewhere.Comment: This is the final version of my conference paper presented at the 28th Conference on the Mathematical Foundations of Programming Semantics (Bath, June 2012); to appear in the Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science. 16p