Intuitionistic ancestral logic as a dependently typed abstract programming language

Liron Cohen, Robert L. Constable

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

It is well-known that concepts and methods of logic (more specifically constructive logic) occupy a central place in computer science. While it is quite common to identify ‘logic’ with ‘first-order logic’ (FOL), a careful examination of the various applications of logic in computer science reveals that FOL is insufficient for most of them, and that its most crucial shortcoming is its inability to provide inductive definitions in general, and the notion of the transitive closure in particular. The minimal logic that can serve for this goal is ancestral logic (AL). In this paper we define a constructive version of AL, pure intuitionistic ancestral logic (iAL), extending pure intuitionistic first-order logic (iFOL). This logic is a dependently typed abstract programming language with computational functionality beyond iFOL, given by its realizer for the transitive closure operator TC, which corresponds to recursive programs. We derive this operator from the natural type theoretic definition of TC using intersection type. We show that provable formulas in iAL are uniformly realizable, thus iAL is sound with respect to constructive type theory. We further outline how iAL can serve as a natural framework for reasoning about programs.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationLogic, Language, Information and Computation - 22nd International Workshop, WoLLIC 2015, Proceedings
EditorsRuy de Queiroz, Lawrence S. Moss, Anjolina G. de Oliveira, Valeria de Paiva, Daniel Leivant
PublisherSpringer Verlag
Pages14-26
Number of pages13
ISBN (Print)9783662477083
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jan 2015
Externally publishedYes
Event22nd International Workshop on Logic, Language, Information and Computation, WoLLIC 2015 - Bloomington, United States
Duration: 20 Jul 201523 Jul 2015

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume9160

Conference

Conference22nd International Workshop on Logic, Language, Information and Computation, WoLLIC 2015
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityBloomington
Period20/07/1523/07/15

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • Computer Science(all)

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