Cirquent calculus

Last updated
Cirquents can be thought of as collections of sequents with possibly shared elements Cirquents vs sequents.png
Cirquents can be thought of as collections of sequents with possibly shared elements

Cirquent calculus is a proof calculus that manipulates graph-style constructs termed cirquents, as opposed to the traditional tree-style objects such as formulas or sequents. Cirquents come in a variety of forms, but they all share one main characteristic feature, making them different from the more traditional objects of syntactic manipulation. This feature is the ability to explicitly account for possible sharing of subcomponents between different components. For instance, it is possible to write an expression where two subexpressions F and E, while neither one is a subexpression of the other, still have a common occurrence of a subexpression G (as opposed to having two different occurrences of G, one in F and one in E).

Contents

Overview

The approach was introduced by G. Japaridze in [1] as an alternative proof theory capable of "taming" various nontrivial fragments of his computability logic, which had otherwise resisted all axiomatization attempts within the traditional proof-theoretic frameworks. [2] [3] The origin of the term “cirquent” is CIRcuit+seQUENT, as the simplest form of cirquents, while resembling circuits rather than formulas, can be thought of as collections of one-sided sequents (for instance, sequents of a given level of a Gentzen-style proof tree) where some sequents may have shared elements.

Cirquent for the "two out of three" combination of resources, inexpressible in linear logic Cirquent for the "two out of three" combination of resources.png
Cirquent for the "two out of three" combination of resources, inexpressible in linear logic

The basic version of cirquent calculus [4] was accompanied with an "abstract resource semantics" and the claim that the latter was an adequate formalization of the resource philosophy traditionally associated with linear logic. Based on that claim and the fact that the semantics induced a logic properly stronger than (affine) linear logic, Japaridze argued that linear logic was incomplete as a logic of resources. Furthermore, he argued that not only the deductive power but also the expressive power of linear logic was weak, for it, unlike cirquent calculus, failed to capture the ubiquitous phenomenon of resource sharing. [5]

Linear logic understands the displayed formula as the left cirquent, while classical logic as the right cirquent Linear logic vs classical logic.png
Linear logic understands the displayed formula as the left cirquent, while classical logic as the right cirquent

The resource philosophy of cirquent calculus sees the approaches of linear logic and classical logic as two extremes: the former does not allow any sharing at all, while in the latter “everything is shared that can be shared”. Unlike cirquent calculus, neither approach thus permits mixed cases where some identical subformulas are shared and some not.

Among the later-found applications of cirquent calculus was the use of it to define a semantics for purely propositional independence-friendly logic. [6] The corresponding logic was axiomatized by W. Xu. [7]

Syntactically, cirquent calculi are deep inference systems with the unique feature of subformula-sharing. This feature has been shown to provide speedup for certain proofs. For instance, polynomial size analytic proofs for the propositional pigeonhole have been constructed. [8] Only quasipolynomial analytic proofs have been found for this principle in other deep inference systems. [9] In resolution or analytic Gentzen-style systems, the pigeonhole principle is known to have only exponential size proofs. [10]

Related Research Articles

In logic and proof theory, natural deduction is a kind of proof calculus in which logical reasoning is expressed by inference rules closely related to the "natural" way of reasoning. This contrasts with Hilbert-style systems, which instead use axioms as much as possible to express the logical laws of deductive reasoning.

Proof theory is a major branch of mathematical logic and theoretical computer science within which proofs are treated as formal mathematical objects, facilitating their analysis by mathematical techniques. Proofs are typically presented as inductively-defined data structures such as lists, boxed lists, or trees, which are constructed according to the axioms and rules of inference of a given logical system. Consequently, proof theory is syntactic in nature, in contrast to model theory, which is semantic in nature.

In mathematical logic, sequent calculus is a style of formal logical argumentation in which every line of a proof is a conditional tautology instead of an unconditional tautology. Each conditional tautology is inferred from other conditional tautologies on earlier lines in a formal argument according to rules and procedures of inference, giving a better approximation to the natural style of deduction used by mathematicians than to David Hilbert's earlier style of formal logic, in which every line was an unconditional tautology. More subtle distinctions may exist; for example, propositions may implicitly depend upon non-logical axioms. In that case, sequents signify conditional theorems in a first-order language rather than conditional tautologies.

In mathematical logic, a sequent is a very general kind of conditional assertion.

In programming language theory and proof theory, the Curry–Howard correspondence is the direct relationship between computer programs and mathematical proofs.

Linear logic is a substructural logic proposed by Jean-Yves Girard as a refinement of classical and intuitionistic logic, joining the dualities of the former with many of the constructive properties of the latter. Although the logic has also been studied for its own sake, more broadly, ideas from linear logic have been influential in fields such as programming languages, game semantics, and quantum physics, as well as linguistics, particularly because of its emphasis on resource-boundedness, duality, and interaction.

Computability logic (CoL) is a research program and mathematical framework for redeveloping logic as a systematic formal theory of computability, as opposed to classical logic, which is a formal theory of truth. It was introduced and so named by Giorgi Japaridze in 2003.

Game semantics is an approach to formal semantics that grounds the concepts of truth or validity on game-theoretic concepts, such as the existence of a winning strategy for a player, somewhat resembling Socratic dialogues or medieval theory of Obligationes.

In computer science, interactive computation is a mathematical model for computation that involves input/output communication with the external world during computation.

Noncommutative logic is an extension of linear logic that combines the commutative connectives of linear logic with the noncommutative multiplicative connectives of the Lambek calculus. Its sequent calculus relies on the structure of order varieties, and the correctness criterion for its proof nets is given in terms of partial permutations. It also has a denotational semantics in which formulas are interpreted by modules over some specific Hopf algebras.

Bunched logic is a variety of substructural logic proposed by Peter O'Hearn and David Pym. Bunched logic provides primitives for reasoning about resource composition, which aid in the compositional analysis of computer and other systems. It has category-theoretic and truth-functional semantics, which can be understood in terms of an abstract concept of resource, and a proof theory in which the contexts Γ in an entailment judgement Γ ⊢ A are tree-like structures (bunches) rather than lists or (multi)sets as in most proof calculi. Bunched logic has an associated type theory, and its first application was in providing a way to control the aliasing and other forms of interference in imperative programs. The logic has seen further applications in program verification, where it is the basis of the assertion language of separation logic, and in systems modelling, where it provides a way to decompose the resources used by components of a system.

In mathematical logic, a proof calculus or a proof system is built to prove statements.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Kowalski</span> British computer scientist (born 1941)

Robert Anthony Kowalski is an American-British logician and computer scientist, whose research is concerned with developing both human-oriented models of computing and computational models of human thinking. He has spent most of his career in the United Kingdom.

Giorgi Japaridze is a Georgian-American researcher in logic and theoretical computer science. He currently holds the title of Full Professor at the Computing Sciences Department of Villanova University. Japaridze is best known for his invention of computability logic, cirquent calculus, and Japaridze's polymodal logic.

Logics for computability are formulations of logic that capture some aspect of computability as a basic notion. This usually involves a mix of special logical connectives as well as a semantics that explains how the logic is to be interpreted in a computational way.

In logic and theoretical computer science, and specifically proof theory and computational complexity theory, proof complexity is the field aiming to understand and analyse the computational resources that are required to prove or refute statements. Research in proof complexity is predominantly concerned with proving proof-length lower and upper bounds in various propositional proof systems. For example, among the major challenges of proof complexity is showing that the Frege system, the usual propositional calculus, does not admit polynomial-size proofs of all tautologies. Here the size of the proof is simply the number of symbols in it, and a proof is said to be of polynomial size if it is polynomial in the size of the tautology it proves.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ruy de Queiroz</span>

Ruy J. Guerra B. de Queiroz is an associate professor at Universidade Federal de Pernambuco and holds significant works in the research fields of Mathematical logic, proof theory, foundations of mathematics and philosophy of mathematics. He is the founder of the Workshop on Logic, Language, Information and Computation (WoLLIC), which has been organised annually since 1994, typically in June or July.

Japaridze's polymodal logic (GLP) is a system of provability logic with infinitely many provability modalities. This system has played an important role in some applications of provability algebras in proof theory, and has been extensively studied since the late 1980s. It is named after Giorgi Japaridze.

Dale Miller is an American computer scientist and author. He is a Director of Research at Inria Saclay and one of the designers of the λProlog programming language and the Abella interactive theorem prover.

References

  1. G.Japaridze, “Introduction to cirquent calculus and abstract resource semantics”. Journal of Logic and Computation 16 (2006), pp. 489–532.
  2. G.Japaridze, “The taming of recurrences in computability logic through cirquent calculus, Part I”. Archive for Mathematical Logic 52 (2013), pages 173–212.
  3. G.Japaridze, “The taming of recurrences in computability logic through cirquent calculus, Part II” Archive for Mathematical Logic 52 (2013), pages 213–259.
  4. G.Japaridze, "Introduction to cirquent calculus and abstract resource semantics". Journal of Logic and Computation 16 (2006), pp. 489–532.
  5. G.Japaridze, “Cirquent calculus deepened [ dead link ].” Journal of Logic and Computation 18 (2008), pp. 983–1028.
  6. G.Japaridze, “From formulas to cirquents in computability logic”. Logical Methods in Computer Science 7 (2011), Issue 2, Paper 1, pp. 1–55.
  7. W.Xu, “A propositional system induced by Japaridze's approach to IF logic [ dead link ]”. Logic Journal of the IGPL 22 (2014), pages 982–991.
  8. G.Japaridze, “Cirquent calculus deepened [ dead link ].” Journal of Logic and Computation 18 (2008), pp. 983–1028.
  9. A. Das, “On the pigeonhole and related principles in Deep inference and monotone systems”.
  10. A. Haken, “The intractability of resolution”. Theoretical Computer Science 39 (1985), pp. 297–308.

Literature