2013-11-20: Robin Adams (MSP visitor)

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 16:51:42 +0000

Robin Adams (MSP visitor)

Classical Type Theories

Abstract

In 1987, Felleisen showed how to add control operators (for things like exceptions and unconditional jumps) to the untyped lambda-calculus. In 1990, Griffin idly wondered what would happen if one did the same in a typed lambda calculus. The answer came out: the inhabited types become the theorems of classical logic.

I will present the lambda mu-calculus, one of the cleanest attempts to add control operators to a type theory. We'll cover the good news: the inhabited types are the tautologies of minimal classical logic, and Godel's Double Negation translation from classical to intuitionistic logic turns into the CPS translation.

And the bad news: control operators don't play well with other types. Add natural numbers (or some other inductive type), and you get inconsistency. Add Sigma-types, and you get degeneracy (any two objects of the same type are definitionally equal). It gets worse: add plus-types, and you break Subject Reduction.

2013-11-20 11:00:00 UTC
LT1310