Computer Verification for Historians of Philosophy

Interactive theorem provers might seem particularly impractical in the history of philosophy. Journal articles in this discipline are generally not formalized. Interactive theorem provers involve a learning curve for which the payoffs might seem minimal. In this article I argue that interactive theorem provers have already demonstrated their potential as a useful tool for historians of philosophy; I do this by highlighting examples of work where this has already been done. Further, I argue that interactive theorem provers can continue to be useful tools for historians of philosophy in the future; this claim is defended through a more conceptual analysis of what historians of philosophy do that identifies argument reconstruction as a core activity of such practitioners. It is then shown that interactive theorem provers can assist in this core practice by a description of what interactive theorem provers are and can do. If this is right, then computer verification for historians of philosophy is in the offing

Computer verification for historians of philosophy

Interactive theorem provers might seem particularly impractical in the history of philosophy. Journal articles in this discipline are generally not formalized. Interactive theorem provers involve a learning curve for which the payoffs might seem minimal. In this article I argue that interactive theorem provers have already demonstrated their potential as a useful tool for historians of philosophy; I do this by highlighting examples of work where this has already been done. Further, I argue that interactive theorem provers can continue to be useful tools for historians of philosophy in the future; this claim is defended through a more conceptual analysis of what historians of philosophy do that identifies argument reconstruction as a core activity of such practitioners. It is then shown that interactive theorem provers can assist in this core practice by a description of what interactive theorem provers are and can do. If this is right, then computer verification for historians of philosophy is in the offing

The Coq Library as a Theory Graph

Representing proof assistant libraries in a way that allows further processing in other systems is becoming increasingly important. It is a critical missing link for integrating proof assistants both with each other or with peripheral tools such as IDEs or proof checkers. Such representations cannot be generated from library source files because they lack semantic enrichment (inferred types, etc.) and only the original proof assistant is able to process them. But even when using the proof assistant\u2019s internal data structures, the complexities of logic, implementation, and library still make this very difficult. We describe one such representation, namely for the library of Coq, using OMDoc theory graphs as the target format. Coq is arguably the most formidable of all proof assistant libraries to tackle, and our work makes a significant step forward. On the theoretical side, our main contribution is a translation of the Coq module system into theory graphs. This greatly reduces the complexity of the library as the more arcane module system features are eliminated while preserving most of the structure. On the practical side, our main contribution is an implementation of this translation. It takes the entire Coq library, which is split over hundreds of decentralized repositories, and produces easily-reusable OMDoc files as output