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Constructive Decision via Redundancy-Free Proof-Search

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Abstract

We give a constructive account of Kripke–Curry’s method which was used to establish the decidability of implicational relevance logic (\(\mathbf{R}_{{\rightarrow }}\)). To sustain our approach, we mechanize this method in axiom-free Coq, abstracting away from the specific features of \(\mathbf{R}_{{\rightarrow }}\) to keep only the essential ingredients of the technique. In particular we show how to replace Kripke/Dickson’s lemma by a constructive form of Ramsey’s theorem based on the notion of almost full relation. We also explain how to replace König’s lemma with an inductive form of Brouwer’s Fan theorem. We instantiate our abstract proof to get a constructive decision procedure for \(\mathbf{R}_{{\rightarrow }}\) and discuss potential applications to other logical decidability problems.

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Notes

  1. https://coq.inria.fr.

  2. As for coverability in BVASS, it seems that the arguments developed in [7] cannot easily be converted to constructive ones (private communication with S. Demri).

  3. i.e. they are identical when ignoring repetitions and permutations.

  4. Dickson’s lemma states that under product order, \(\mathbb {N}^k\) is a WQO for any \(k\in \mathbb {N}\).

  5. Moreover, in type theory, the function type subsumes logical implication via the BHK interpretation where proofs of \(A\mathbin {\rightarrow }B\) are viewed as functions mapping proofs of A to proofs of B.

  6. Unrestricted contraction would generate infinitely branching proof-search.

  7. This result is known as Dickson’s lemma when restricted to \(\mathbb {N}^k\) with the point-wise product order. The inclusion relation between multisets built from the finite set \(\mathcal S\) is a particular case of the product order \(\mathbb {N}^k\) where k is the cardinal of \(\mathcal S\).

  8. The Coq standard library is documented at https://coq.inria.fr/library.

  9. We temporarily use letters like R or S to represent binary redundancy relations because some of the next results involve several of such relations.

  10. see Corollary  below.

  11. Typically, systems which include a cut-rule do not satisfy the property which is why cut-elimination is viewed as a critical requisite to design sequent-based decision procedures. The same remark holds for the modus-ponens rule of Hilbert systems, usually making them unsuited for decision procedures.

  12. For this, we need a notion of sub-statement that is reflexive, transitive and such that valid rules instances possess the sub-statement property.

  13. See http://www.loria.fr/~larchey/Kruskal.

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Correspondence to Dominique Larchey-Wendling.

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Work partially supported by the joint project ANR-FWF TICAMORE (No. ANR-16-CE91-0002).

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Larchey-Wendling, D. Constructive Decision via Redundancy-Free Proof-Search. J Autom Reasoning 64, 1197–1219 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10817-020-09555-y

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