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Soundness and Completeness Proofs by Coinductive Methods

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Abstract

We show how codatatypes can be employed to produce compact, high-level proofs of key results in logic: the soundness and completeness of proof systems for variations of first-order logic. For the classical completeness result, we first establish an abstract property of possibly infinite derivation trees. The abstract proof can be instantiated for a wide range of Gentzen and tableau systems for various flavors of first-order logic. Soundness becomes interesting as soon as one allows infinite proofs of first-order formulas. This forms the subject of several cyclic proof systems for first-order logic augmented with inductive predicate definitions studied in the literature. All the discussed results are formalized using Isabelle/HOL’s recently introduced support for codatatypes and corecursion. The development illustrates some unique features of Isabelle/HOL’s new coinductive specification language such as nesting through non-free types and mixed recursion–corecursion.

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Notes

  1. Given formulas \(\psi _1,\ldots ,\psi _k\), we let \({\textsf {Conj}}\;\psi _1\;\ldots \;\psi _k\) denote \({\textsf {Conj}}\;\psi _1\;({\textsf {Conj}}\;\psi _2\;(\ldots \psi _n)\ldots )\). In particular, when \(k = 0\) it denotes the “true” formula \(\top \), defined in a standard way, e.g., as \({\textsf {Imp}}\;a\;a\) for some atom a.

  2. This is acceptable here, since we employ finitary Horn clauses and the language is countable. Different assumptions may require larger ordinals.

  3. The definition of \(P_{p,\_}\) works with the original clauses \(\chi \in {\textsf {ind}}_p\), whereas here we apply it to the “copies” \(\chi '\) of \(\chi \) guaranteed to have their variables fresh for \(\Gamma \) and \(\Delta \), as stipulated in the \(p_{\mathrm{split}}\) rule. This is unproblematic, since it is easy to verify that the definition of \(P_{p,\_}\) is invariant under bijective renaming of variables in the clauses \(\chi \).

  4. Goodness is decidable for cyclic trees in logics where rule application is decidable, such as FOL\(_{\textsf {ind}}\) [16].

  5. In the proof system from Example 2, \({\textsf {eff}}\) is not deterministic due to the rule All R. It can be made deterministic by refining the rule with a systematic choice of the fresh variable y.

  6. And Kripke’s degree of rigor in this early article is not far from today’s state of the art in proof theory; see, e.g., Troelstra and Schwichtenberg [51].

  7. This is the only error we found in this otherwise excellent chapter on tableaux.

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Acknowledgments

Tobias Nipkow made this work possible. Mark Summerfield and the anonymous reviewers suggested many textual improvements to earlier versions of this article. The reviewers read the submitted paper carefully and made useful and insightful comments and suggestions. Blanchette was partially supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) project Hardening the Hammer (Grant NI 491/14-1). Popescu was partially supported by the EPSRC project Verification of Web-based Systems (VOWS, Grant EP/N019547/1) and by the DFG project Security Type Systems and Deduction (Grant NI 491/13-3). Traytel was supported by the DFG program Program and Model Analysis (PUMA, Doctorate Program 1480). The authors are listed alphabetically.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Inria Nancy and LORIA, Villers-lès-Nancy, France

    Jasmin Christian Blanchette

  2. Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik, Saarbrücken, Germany

    Jasmin Christian Blanchette

  3. Department of Computer Science, School of Science and Technology, Middlesex University, London, UK

    Andrei Popescu

  4. Institute of Information Security, Department of Computer Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Dmitriy Traytel

  5. Institute of Mathematics Simion Stoilow of the Romanian Academy, Bucharest, Romania

    Andrei Popescu

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  1. Jasmin Christian Blanchette
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Blanchette, J.C., Popescu, A. & Traytel, D. Soundness and Completeness Proofs by Coinductive Methods. J Autom Reasoning 58, 149–179 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10817-016-9391-3

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