Proofs by logical relations play a key role to establish rich properties such as normalization or contextual equivalence. They are also challenging to mechanize. In this paper, we describe the completeness proof of algorithmic equality for simply typed lambda-terms by Crary where we reason about logically equivalent terms in the proof environment Beluga. There are three key aspects we rely upon: 1) we encode lambda-terms together with their operational semantics and algorithmic equality using higher-order abstract syntax 2) we directly encode the corresponding logical equivalence of well-typed lambda-terms using recursive types and higher-order functions 3) we exploit Beluga's support for contexts and the equational theory of simultaneous substitutions. This leads to a direct and compact mechanization, demonstrating Beluga's strength at formalizing logical relations proofs.
Software security can be ensured by specifying and verifying security properties of software using formal methods with strong theoretical bases. In particular, programs can be modeled in the framework of lambda-calculi, and interesting properties can be expressed formally by contextual equivalence (a.k.a. observational equivalence). Furthermore, imperative features, which exist in most real-life software, can be nicely expressed in the so-called computational lambda-calculus. Contextual equivalence is difficult to prove directly, but we can often use logical relations as a tool to establish it…
We address the problem of providing contextual information about a logical formula (eg provenance, date of validity, or confidence) and representing it within a logical system. In this case, it is needed to rely on a higher order or non standard formalism, or some kind of reification mechanism. We explore the case of reification and formalize the concept of contextualizing logical statements in the case of Description Logics. Then, we define several properties of contextualization that are desirable. No previous approaches satisfy all of the them. Consequently, we define a new way of contextua…
Manifest contract calculi, which integrate cast-based dynamic contract checking and refinement type systems, have been studied as foundations for hybrid contract checking. In this article, we study techniques to reasoning about a polymorphic manifest contract calculus, including a few program transformations related to static contract verification. We first define a polymorphic manifest contract calculus $\mathrm{F}_{H}$, which is much simpler than a previously studied one with delayed substitution, and a logical relation for it and prove that the logical relation is sound with respect to cont…
Program equivalence is the fulcrum for reasoning about and proving properties of programs. For noninterference, for example, program equivalence up to the secrecy level of an observer is shown. A powerful enabler for such proofs are logical relations. Logical relations only recently were adopted for session types--but exclusively for terminating languages. This paper scales logical relations to recursive session types. It develops a logical relation for progress-sensitive noninterference for linear session types, tackling the challenges non-termination and concurrency pose. The contributions i…
We introduce a new form of logical relation which, in the spirit of metric relations, allows us to assign each pair of programs a quantity measuring their distance, rather than a boolean value standing for their being equivalent. The novelty of differential logical relations consists in measuring the distance between terms not (necessarily) by a numerical value, but by a mathematical object which somehow reflects the interactive complexity, i.e. the type, of the compared terms. We exemplify this concept in the simply-typed lambda-calculus, and show a form of soundness theorem. We also see how …
Appel and McAllester's "step-indexed" logical relations have proven to be a simple and effective technique for reasoning about programs in languages with semantically interesting types, such as general recursive types and general reference types. However, proofs using step-indexed models typically involve tedious, error-prone, and proof-obscuring step-index arithmetic, so it is important to develop clean, high-level, equational proof principles that avoid mention of step indices. In this paper, we show how to reason about binary step-indexed logical relations in an abstract and elegant way. Sp…
We discuss quantum non-locality and contextuality, emphasising logical and structural aspects. We also show how the same mathematical structures arise in various areas of classical computation.
We study the nature of applicative bisimilarity in $λ$-calculi endowed with operators for sampling from continuous distributions. On the one hand, we show that bisimilarity, logical equivalence, and testing equivalence all coincide with contextual equivalence when real numbers can be manipulated only through continuous functions. The key ingredient towards this result is a novel notion of Feller-continuity for labelled Markov processes, which we believe of independent interest, being a broad class of LMPs for which coinductive and logically inspired equivalences coincide. On the other hand, we…
It is well-known that constructing models of higher-order probabilistic programming languages is challenging. We show how to construct step-indexed logical relations for a probabilistic extension of a higher-order programming language with impredicative polymorphism and recursive types. We show that the resulting logical relation is sound and complete with respect to the contextual preorder and, moreover, that it is convenient for reasoning about concrete program equivalences. Finally, we extend the language with dynamically allocated first-order references and show how to extend the logical r…
We study coupled logical bisimulation (CLB) to reason about contextual equivalence in the lambda-calculus. CLB originates in a work by Dal Lago, Sangiorgi and Alberti, as a tool to reason about a lambda-calculus with probabilistic constructs. We adapt the original definition to the pure lambda-calculus. We develop the metatheory of CLB in call-by-name and in call-by-value, and draw comparisons with applicative bisimulation (due to Abramsky) and logical bisimulation (due to Sangiorgi, Kobayashi and Sumii). We also study enhancements of the bisimulation method for CLB by developing a theory of u…
We introduce a novel variant of logical relations that maps types not merely to partial equivalence relations on values, as is commonly done, but rather to a proof-relevant generalisation thereof, namely setoids. The objects of a setoid establish that values inhabit semantic types, whilst its morphisms are understood as proofs of semantic equivalence. The transition to proof-relevance solves two well-known problems caused by the use of existential quantification over future worlds in traditional Kripke logical relations: failure of admissibility, and spurious functional dependencies. We illust…
The theory of program modules is of interest to language designers not only for its practical importance to programming, but also because it lies at the nexus of three fundamental concerns in language design: the phase distinction, computational effects, and type abstraction. We contribute a fresh "synthetic" take on program modules that treats modules as the fundamental constructs, in which the usual suspects of prior module calculi (kinds, constructors, dynamic programs) are rendered as derived notions in terms of a modal type-theoretic account of the phase distinction. We simplify the accou…
Logical relations and their generalizations are a fundamental tool in proving properties of lambda-calculi, e.g., yielding sound principles for observational equivalence. We propose a natural notion of logical relations able to deal with the monadic types of Moggi's computational lambda-calculus. The treatment is categorical, and is based on notions of subsconing, mono factorization systems, and monad morphisms. Our approach has a number of interesting applications, including cases for lambda-calculi with non-determinism (where being in logical relation means being bisimilar), dynamic name cre…
We present a simple technique for semantic, open logical relations arguments about languages with recursive types, which, as we show, follows from a principled foundation in categorical semantics. We demonstrate how it can be used to give a very straightforward proof of correctness of practical forward- and reverse-mode dual numbers style automatic differentiation (AD) on ML-family languages. The key idea is to combine it with a suitable open logical relations technique for reasoning about differentiable partial functions (a suitable lifting of the partiality monad to logical relations), which…
Program equivalence in linear contexts, where programs are used or executed exactly once, is an important issue in programming languages. However, existing techniques like those based on bisimulations and logical relations only target at contextual equivalence in the usual (non-linear) functional languages, and fail in capturing non-trivial equivalent programs in linear contexts, particularly when non-determinism is present. We propose the notion of linear contextual equivalence to formally characterize such program equivalence, as well as a novel and general approach to studying it in higher-…
We investigate how various forms of bisimulation can be characterised using the technology of logical relations. The approach taken is that each form of bisimulation corresponds to an algebraic structure derived from a transition system, and the general result is that a relation $R$ between two transition systems on state spaces $S$ and $T$ is a bisimulation if and only if the derived algebraic structures are in the logical relation automatically generated from $R$. We show that this approach works for the original Park-Milner bisimulation and that it extends to weak bisimulation, and branchin…
This article proposes the use of temporal logic for an analysis of instrumentality inspired by the work of G.H. von Wright. The first part of the article contains the philosophical foundations. We discuss von Wright's general theory of agency and his account of instrumentality. Moreover, we propose several refinements to this framework via rigorous definitions of the core notions involved. In the second part, we develop a logical system called Temporal Logic of Action and Expectations (TLAE). The logic is inspired by a fragment of propositional dynamic logic based on indeterministic time. The …
This paper proposes a way to compute the meanings associated with sentences with generic noun phrases corresponding to the generalized quantifier most. We call these generics specimens and they resemble stereotypes or prototypes in lexical semantics. The meanings are viewed as logical formulae that can thereafter be interpreted in your favourite models. To do so, we depart significantly from the dominant Fregean view with a single untyped universe. Indeed, our proposal adopts type theory with some hints from Hilbert ε-calculus (Hilbert, 1922; Avigad and Zach, 2008) and from medieval philosophy…
