[Haskell-cafe] Relationship between ((a -> Void) -> Void) and (forall r. (a -> r) -> r)

[Kim-Ee Yeoh]

Very cool to see the constructive code for the proof of double negation in
intuitionistic logic.


But what about the Curry-Howard correspondence for classical logic?


What would the classical code for the classical proof of excluded middle
look like?

On Fri, May 15, 2020 at 11:09 PM Chris Smith <cdsmith at gmail.com> wrote:

> This was indeed a fun puzzle to play with.  I think this becomes easier to
> interpret if you factor out De Morgan's Law from the form you posted at the
> beginning of your email.
>
> https://code.world/haskell#PYGDwpaMZ_2iSs74NnwCUrg
>
>
> On Fri, May 15, 2020 at 5:23 AM Ruben Astudillo <ruben.astud at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On 13-05-20 09:15, Olaf Klinke wrote:
>> > Excersise: Prove that intuitionistically, it is absurd to deny the law
>> > of excluded middle:
>> >
>> > Not (Not (Either a (Not a)))
>>
>> It took me a while but it was good effort. I will try to explain how I
>> derived it. We need a term for
>>
>>    proof :: Not (Not (Either a (Not a)))
>>    proof :: (Either a (Not a) -> Void) -> Void
>>
>> A first approximation is
>>
>>    -- Use the (cont :: Either a (Not a) -> Void) to construct the Void
>>    -- We need to pass it an Either a (Not a)
>>    proof :: (Either a (Not a) -> Void) -> Void
>>    proof cont = cont $ Left <no a to fill in>
>>
>> Damn, we can't use the `Left` constructor as we are missing an `a` value
>> to fill with. Let's try with `Right`
>>
>>    proof :: (Either a (Not a) -> Void) -> Void
>>    proof cont = cont $ Right (\a -> cont (Left a))
>>
>> Mind bending. But it does make sense, on the `Right` constructor we
>> assume we are have an `a` but we have to return a `Void`. Luckily we can
>> construct a `Void` retaking the path we were gonna follow before filling
>> with a `Left a`.
>>
>> Along the way I had other questions related to the original mail and
>> given you seem knowledgeable I want to corroborate with you. I've seen
>> claimed on the web that the CPS transform *is* the double negation [1]
>> [2]. I don't think that true, it is almost true in my view. I'll
>> explain, these are the types at hand:
>>
>>     type DoubleNeg a = (a -> Void) -> Void
>>     type CPS a = forall r. (a -> r) -> r
>>
>> We want to see there is an equivalence/isomorphism between the two
>> types. One implication is trivial
>>
>>     proof_CPS_DoubleNeg :: forall a. CPS a -> DoubleNeg a
>>     proof_CPS_DoubleNeg cont = cont
>>
>> We only specialized `r ~ Void`, which mean we can transform a `CPS a`
>> into a `DoubleNeg a`. So far so good, we are missing the other
>> implication
>>
>>     -- bind type variables: a, r
>>     -- cont   :: (a -> Void) -> Void
>>     -- absurd :: forall b. Void -> b
>>     -- cc     :: a -> r
>>     proof_DoubleNeg_CPS :: forall a. DoubleNeg a -> CPS a
>>     proof_DoubleNeg_CPS cont = \cc -> absurd $ cont (_missing . cc)
>>
>> Trouble, we can't fill `_missing :: r -> Void` as such function only
>> exists when `r ~ Void` as it must be the empty function. This is why I
>> don't think `CPS a` is the double negation.
>>
>> But I can see how people can get confused. Given a value `x :: a` we can
>> embed it onto `CPS a` via `return x`. As we saw before we can pass from
>> `CPS a` to `DoubleNeg a`. So we have *two* ways for passing from `a` to
>> `DoubleNeg a`, the first one is directly as in the previous mail. The
>> second one is using `proof_CPS_DoubleNeg`
>>
>>     embed_onto_DoubleNeg :: a -> DoubleNeg
>>     embed_onto_DoubleNeg = proof_CPS_DoubleNeg . return
>>       where
>>         return :: a -> CPS a
>>         return a = ($ a)
>>
>> So CPS is /almost/ the double negation. It is still interesting because
>> it's enough to embed a classical fragment of logic onto the constructive
>> fragment (LEM, pierce etc). But calling it a double negation really
>> tripped me off.
>>
>> Am I correct? Or is there other reason why CPS is called the double
>> negation transformation?
>>
>> Thank for your time reading this, I know it was long.
>>
>> [1]: http://jelv.is/talks/curry-howard.html#slide30
>> [2]:
>>
>> https://www.quora.com/What-is-continuation-passing-style-in-functional-programming
>>
>> --
>> -- Rubén
>> -- pgp: 4EE9 28F7 932E F4AD
>>
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-- 
-- Kim-Ee
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