English

Logic as a distributive law

Logic in Computer Science 2016-10-18 v3

Abstract

We present an algorithm for deriving a spatial-behavioral type system from a formal presentation of a computational calculus. Given a 2-monad Calc: Catv\to Cat for the free calculus on a category of terms and rewrites and a 2-monad BoolAlg for the free Boolean algebra on a category, we get a 2-monad Form = BoolAlg + Calc for the free category of formulae and proofs. We also get the 2-monad BoolAlg \circ Calc for subsets of terms. The interpretation of formulae is a natural transformation \interp\interp{-}: Form \Rightarrow BoolAlg \circ Calc defined by the units and multiplications of the monads and a distributive law transformation δ\delta: Calc \circ BoolAlg \Rightarrow BoolAlg \circ Calc. This interpretation is consistent both with the Curry-Howard isomorphism and with realizability. We give an implementation of the "possibly" modal operator parametrized by a two-hole term context and show that, surprisingly, the arrow type constructor in the λ\lambda-calculus is a specific case. We also exhibit nontrivial formulae encoding confinement and liveness properties for a reflective higher-order variant of the π\pi-calculus.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1610.02247,
  title  = {Logic as a distributive law},
  author = {Mike Stay and Lucius Gregory Meredith},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1610.02247},
  year   = {2016}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T16:14:15.041Z